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ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS 
EDITED BT JOHN MORLET 

ANDREW MARVELL 



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ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS 



ANDREW MARVELL 



BY 

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL 



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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1905 

AU rights reserved 



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Copyright, 1905, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1905. 



J. S. CuBhing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



PREFACE 

I DESIRE to express my indebtedness to the following 
editions of Mar veil's Works : — 

(1) The WorTcs of Andreio Marvell, Esq., Poetical, 

Controversial, and Political : containing many- 
Original Letters, Poems, and Tracts never 
before printed, with a New Life. By Cap- 
tain Edward Thompson. In three volumes. 
London, 1776. 

(2) Tlie Complete Works in Verse and Prose of 

Andreio Marvell, 31. P. Edited with Memorial- 
Introduction and Notes by the Eev. Alex- 
ander B. Grosart. In four volumes. 1872. 
(In the Fuller Worthies Library.) 

(3) Poems and Satires of Andreio Marvell, sometime 

Member of Parliament for Htdl. Edited by 
G. A. Aitken. Two volumes. Lawrence and 
Bullen, 1892. 
Reprinted Routledge, 1905. 

Mr. C. H. Eirth's Life of Marvell in the thirty-sixth 
volume of The Dictionary of National Biography has, 
I am sure, preserved me from some, and possibly from 
many, blunders. 

A. B. 
3 New Square, Lincoln's Inn, 
June 3, 1905, 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

Early Days at School and College .... 1 

CHAPTER II 
"The Happy Garden-State" 19 

CHAPTER III 
A Civil Servant in the Time of the Commonwealth 48 

CHAPTER IV 
In the House of Commons 75 

CHAPTER V 
"The Rehearsal Transprosed" 151 

CHAPTER VI 

Last Years in the House of Commons . . . 179 

CHAPTER VII 
Final Satires and Death 211 

CHAPTER Vin 
Work as a Man of Letters 225 

Index 233 

vii 



a:n"drew maryell 

CHAPTEE I 

EARLY DAYS AT SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 

The name of Andrew Marvell ever sounds sweet, and 
always has, to use words of Charles Lamb's, a fine 
relish to the ear. As the author of poetry of exquisite 
quality, where for the last time may be heard the 
priceless note of the Elizabethan lyricist, whilst at the 
same moment utterance is being given to thoughts 
and feelings which reach far forward to Wordsworth 
and Shelley, Marvell can never be forgotten in his 
native England. 

Lines of Marvell's poetry have secured the final 
honours, and incurred the peril, of becoming " familiar 
quotations " ready for use on a great variety of occa- 
sion. We may, perhaps, have been bidden once or 
twice too often to remember how the Royal actor 

" Nothing common did, or mean, 
Upon that memorable scene," 

or have been assured to our surprise by some self- 
satisfied worldling how he always hears at his back, 

" Time's winged chariot hurrying near." 

A true poet can, however, never be defiled by the 
rough usage of the populace. 

As a politician Marvell lives in the old-fashioned 

B 1 



2 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

vivacious history-books (which if they die out, as they 
show some signs of doing, will carry with them half 
the historic sense of the nation) as the hero of an 
anecdote of an unsuccessful attempt made upon his 
political virtue by a minister of the Crown, as a rare 
type of an inflexible patriot, and as the last member 
of the House of Commons who was content to take 
wages from, instead of contributing to the support of, 
his constituents. As the intimate friend and colleague 
of Milton, Marvell shares some of the indescribable 
majesty of that throne. A poet, a scholar, a travel- 
ler, a diplomat, a famous wit, an active member of 
Parliament from the Restoration to his death in 1678, 
the life of Andrew Marvell might a priori be supposed 
to be one easy to write, at all events after the fashion 
in which men's lives get written. But it is nothing 
of the kind, as many can testify. A more elusive, 
non-recorded character is hardly to be found. We 
know all about him, but very little of him. His 
parentage, his places of education, many of his friends 
and acquaintances, are all known. He wrote nearly 
four hundred letters to his Hull constituents, carefully 
preserved by the Corporation, in which he narrates 
with much particularity the course of public business 
at Westminster. Notwithstanding these materials, 
the man Andrew Marvell remains undiscovered. He 
rarely comes to the surface. Though both an author 
and a member of Parliament, not a trace of personal 
vanity is noticeable, and vanity is a quality of great 
assistance to the biographer. That Marvell was a 
strong, shrewd, capable man of affairs, with enormous 
powers of self-repression, his Hull correspondence 
clearly proves, but what more he was it is hard to 
say. He rarely spoke during his eighteen years in 
the House of Commons. It is impossible to doubt 



I.] EARLY DAYS AT SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 3 

that sucli a man in such a place was, in Mr. Disraeli's 
phrase, a " personage." Yet when we look for recog- 
nition of what we feel sure was the fact, we fail to 
find it. Bishop Burnet, in his delightful history, 
supplies us with sketches of the leading Parliamen- 
tarians of Marvell's day, yet to Marvell himself he 
refers but once, and then not by name but as "the 
liveliest droll of the age," words which mean much but 
tell little. In Clarendon's Autobiography, another book 
which lets the reader into the very clash and crowd of 
life, there is no mention of one of the author's most bitter 
and cruel enemies. With Prince Eupert, Marvell was 
credited by his contemporaries with a great intimacy; 
he was a friend of Harrington's ; it may be he was a 
member of the once famous "Kota" Club; it i^j im- 
possible to resist the conviction that wherever he went 
he made a great impression, that he was a central 
figure in the lobbies of the House of Commons and a 
man of much account ; yet no record survives either 
to convince posterity of his social charm or even to 
convey any exact notion of his personal character. 

A somewhat solitary man he would appear to have 
been, though fond of occasional jollity. He lived 
alone in lodgings, and was much immersed in business, 
about a good deal of which we know nothing except 
that it took him abroad. His death was sudden, and 
when three years afterwards the first edition of his 
poems made its appearance, it was prefaced by a certifi- 
cate signed " Mary Marvell," to the effect that every- 
thing in the book was printed "according to the 
copies of my late dear husband." Until after Marvell's 
death we never hear of Mrs. Marvell, and with this 
signed certificate she disappears. In a series of Lives 
of Poets' Wives it would be hard to make much of 
Mrs. Andrew Marvell. For different but still cogent 



4 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

reasons it is hard to write a life of her famous 
husband. 

Andrew Marvell was born at "VVinestead in Holder- 
nesse, on Easter Eve, the 31st of March 1621, in the 
Rectory House, the elder Marvell, also Andrew, being 
then the parson of the parish. No fitter birthplace 
for a garden-poet can be imagined. Eoses still riot in 
Winestead ; the fruit-tree roots are as mossy as in the 
seventeenth century. At the right season you may 
still 

" Through the hazels thick espy 
The hatching throstle's shining eye." 

Birds, fruits and flowers, woods, gardens, meads, and 
rivers still make the poet's birthplace lovely. 

" Loveliness, magic, and grace, 
They are here — they are set in the world ! 
They abide! and the finest of souls 
Has not been thrilled by them all, 
Nor the dullest been dead to them quite. 
The poet who sings them may die, 
But they are immortal and live. 
For they are the life of the world." 

Holdernesse was not the original home of the 
Marvells, who would seem to have been mostly Cam- 
bridgeshire folk, though the name crops up in other 
counties. Whether Cambridge " men " of a studious 
turn still take long walks I do not know, but " some 
vast amount of years ago" it was considered a pleasant 
excursion, either on foot or on a hired steed, from Cam- 
bridge to Meldreth, where the Elizabethan manor-house, 
long known as " the Marvells'," agreeably embodied the 
tradition that here it was that the poet's father was 
born in 1586. The Church Registers have disappeared. 
Proof is impossible. That there were Marvells in 
the neighbourhood is certain. The famous Cambridge 



I.] EARLY DAYS AT SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 5 

antiquary, William Cole, perhaps the greatest of all 
our collectors, has included ainong his copies of early 
wills those of several Marvells and Mer veils of 
Meldreth and Shepreth, belonging to pre-Eeformation 
times, as their pious gifts to the ''High Altar" and to 
"Our Lady's Light" pleasingly testify. But our 
Andrew was a determined Protestant. 

The poet's father is an interesting figure in our 
Church history. Educated at Emmanuel College, from 
whence he proceeded a Master of Arts in 1608, he took 
Orders ; and after serving as curate at Flamborough, 
was inducted to the living of Winestead in 1614, where 
he remained till 1624, in which year he went to Hull 
as master of the G-rammar School and lecturer, that is 
preacher, of Trinity Church. The elder Marvell be- 
longed, from the beginning to the end of his useful 
and even heroic life, to the Reformed Church of Eng- 
land, or, as his son puts it, " a conformist to the Eites 
and Ceremonies of the Church of England, though I 
confess none of the most over-running and eager in 
them." The younger Marvell, with one boyish interval, 
belonged all through his life to the paternal school of 
religious thought. 

Fuller's account of the elder Marvell is too good to 
be passed over : — 

" He afterwards became Minister at Hull, whei-e for his life- 
time he was well beloved. Most facetious in discourse, yet 
gi'ave in his carriage, a most excellent preacher who, like a 
good husband, never broached what he had new brewed, but 
preached what he had pre-studied some competent time before. 
Insomuch that he was wont to say that he would cross the 
common proverb which called Saturday the working-day and 
Monday the holyday of preachers. It happened that Anno 
Dom. 1640, Jan. 23, crossing Humber in a Barrow boat, the 
same was sandwarpt, and he was drowned therein (with Mrs. 
Skinner, daughter to Sir Edward Coke, a very religious gentle- 



6 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

woman) by the carelessness, not to say drunkenness of the 
boatmen, to the great grief of all good men. His excellent 
comment upon St. Peter is daily desired and expected, if the 
envy and covetousness of private persons for their own use 
deprive not the public of the benefit thereof." ^ 

This good man, to whom perhaps, remembering the 
date of his death, the words may apply, Tu vero felix 
non vitce tantum claritate sed etiam opportunitate mortis, 
was married at Cherry Burton, on the 22nd of October 
1612, to Anne Pease, a member of a family destined 
to become widely known throughout the north of 
England. Of this marriage there were five children, 
all born at Winestead, viz. three daughters, Anne, 
Mary, and Elizabeth, and two sons, Andrew and John, 
the latter of whom died a year after his birth, and was 
buried at Winestead on the 20th September 1624. 

The three daughters married respectively James 
Blaydes of Sutton, Yorkshire, on the 29th of December 
1633 ; Edmund Popple, afterwards Sheriff of Hull, on 
the 18th of August 1636 ; and Eobert More. Anne's 
eldest son, Joseph Blaydes, was Mayor of Hull in 
1702, having married the daughter of a preceding 
Mayor in 1698. The descendants of this branch still 
flourish. The Popples also had children, one of whom, 
William Popple, was a correspondent of his uncle the 
poet's, and a merchant of repute, who became in 1696 
Secretary to the Board of Trade, and the friend of the 
most famous man who ever sat at the table of that 
Board, John Locke. A son of this William Popple led 
a very comfortable eighteenth-century life, which is in 
strong contrast with that of his grand-uncle, for, having 
entered the Cofferers' Office about 1730, he was made 
seven years later Solicitor and Clerk of the Reports to 
the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, and in 

1 Fuller's Worthies (1G62), p. 159. 



I.] EARLY DAYS AT SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 7 

1745 became in succession to a relative, one Alured 
Popple, Governor of the Bermudas, a post he retained 
until his death, which occurred not 

" Where the remote Bermudas ride 
In the ocean's bosom unespied," 

but at his house in Hampstead. So well placed and 
idle a gentleman was almost bound to be a bad poet 
and worse dramatist, and this William Popple was 
both. 

Marvell's third sister, Elizabeth, does not seem to 
have had issue, a certain Thomas More, or Moore, a 
Fellow of Magdalen College, Cambridge, whose name 
occurs in family records, being her stepson. 

In the latter part of 1624 the elder Marvell resigned 
the living of Winestead, and took up the duties of 
schoolmaster and lecturer, or preacher, at Hull. Im- 
portant duties they were, for the old Grammar School 
of Hull dates back to 1486, and may boast of a long 
career of usefulness, never having fallen into that con- 
dition of decay and disrepute from which so many 
similar endowments have been of late years rescued by 
the beneficent and, of course, abused action of the 
Charity Commissioners. Andrew Marvell the elder 
succeeded to and was succeeded by eminent head- 
masters. Trinity Church, where the poet's father 
preached on Sundays to crowded and interested con- 
gregations, was then what it still is, though restored 
by Scott, one of the great churches in the north of 
England. 

The Eev. Andrew Marvell made his mark upon 
Hull. Mr. Grosart, who lacked nothing but the curb 
upon a too exuberant vocabulary, a little less enthu- 
siasm and a great deal more discretion, to be a model 
editor, tells us in his invaluable edition of Tlie Complete 



8 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

Works in Verse and Prose of Andrew Marvell, M.P.,^ that 
he had read a number of the elder Marvell's manuscripts, 
consisting of sermons and miscellaneous papers, from 
which Mr. Grosart proceeds : — 

"I gather three things. 

" (1) That he was a man of a very brave, fearlessly out- 
spoken character. Some of his practical applications in his 
sermons before the Magistrates are daring in their directness 
of reproof, and melting in their wistfulness of entreaty. 

" (2) That he was a well-read man. His Sermons are as 
full of classical and patristic allusions and pat sayings from 
the most occult literatures as even Bishop Andrewes. 

" (3) That he was a man of tireless activity. Besides the 
two offices named, he became head of one of the Great Hos- 
pitals of the Town (Charter House), and in an address to the 
Governors placed before tliem a prescient and statesmanlike 
plan for the better management of its revenues, and for the 
foundation of a Free Public Library to be accessible to all." 

When at a later day, and in the midst of a fierce 
controversy, Andrew Marvell wrote of the clergy as 
"the reserve of our Christianity," he doubtless had 
such men as his father in his mind and memory. 

It was at the old Grammar School of Hull, and Avith 
his father as his Orbilius, that Marvell was initiated 
into the mysteries of the Latin grammar, and was, as 
he tells us, put to his 

"Moutibus, inquit, erunt ; et erant submontibus illis; 
Risit Atlantiades ; et me mihi, perfide, prodis ? 
Me mihi prodis ? ait. 

" For as I remember this scanning was a liberal art that we 
learn'd at Grammar School, and to scan verses as he does the 
Author's prose before we did or were obliged to understand 
them." 2 

i"The Fuller Worthies Library," 4 vols., 1872. Hereafter re- 
ferred to as Grosart. 

^Mr. Smirlce or the Divine in Mode. — Grosart, iv. 15. 



I.] EARLY DAYS AT SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 9 

Irrational methods have often amazingly good 
results, and the Hull Grammar School provided its 
head-master's only son with the rudiments of learning, 
thus enabling him to become in after years what John 
Milton himself, the author of that terrible Treatise on 
Education addressed to Mr. Hartlibb, aftirmed Andrew 
Marvell to be in a written testimonial, " a scholar, and 
well-read in the Latin and Greek authors." 

Attached to the Grammar School there was " a 
great garden," renowned for its wall-fruit and flowers ; 
so by leaving Winestead behind, our " garden-poet," 
that was to be, was not deprived of inspiration. 

Apart from these meagre facts, we know nothing of 
Marvell's boyhood at Hull. His clerical foe. Dr. 
Parker, afterwards Bishop of Oxford, writes con- 
temptuously of " an hunger-starved whelp of a country 
vicar," and in another passage, which undoubtedly 
refers to Marvell, he speaks of " an unhappy education 
among Boatswains and Cabin-boys," whose unsavoury 
phrases, he goes on to suggest, Marvell picked up in 
his childhood. But truth need not be looked for in 
controversial pages. The best argument for a married 
clergy is to be found, for Englishmen at all events, in 
the sixty-seven volumes of the Dictionary of National 
Biography, where are recorded the services rendered to 
religion, philosophy, poetry, justice, and the empire by 
the " whelps " of many a country vicar. Parsons' 
wives may sometimes be trying and hard to explain, 
but an England without the sons of her clergy would 
be shorn of half her glory. 

Marvell's boyhood seems to have been surrounded 
with the things that most make for a child's happiness. 
A sensible, affectionate, humorous, religious father, 
occupying a position of authority, and greatly respected, 
a mother and three elder sisters to make much of his 



10 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

bright wit and early adventures, a comfortable yet 
simple home, and an atmosphere of piety, learning, 
and good fellowship. What more is wanted, or can 
be desired ? The " Boatswains" and " Cabin-boys " of 
Bishop Parker's fancy were in the neighbourhood, no 
doubt, and as stray companions for a half-holiday 
must have had their attractions ; but it is unnecessary 
to attribute Andrew Marvell's style in controversy to 
his early acquaintance with a sea-faring population, 
for he is far more likely to have picked it up from 
his great friend and colleague, the author of Paradise 
Lost. 

Marvell's school education over, he went up to 
Cambridge, not to his father's old college, but to the 
more splendid foundation of Trinity. About the date 
of his matriculation there is a doubt. In Wood's 
Athence Oxonienses there is a note to the effect that 
Marvell was admitted "in matriculam Acad. Cant. 
Coll. Trin." on the 14th of December 1633, when the 
boy was but twelve years old. Dr. Lort, a famous 
master of Trinity in his day, writing in November 
1765 to Captain Edward Thompson, of whom more 
later on, told the captain that until 1635 there was 
no register of admissions of ordinary students, or 
pensioners, as they are called, but only a register of 
Fellows and Foundation Scholars, and in this last- 
named register Marvell's name appears as a Scholar 
sworn and admitted on the 13th of April 1638. As, 
however, Marvell took his B.A. degree in 1639, he 
must have been in residence long before April 1638. 
Probably Marvell went to Trinity about 1635, just 
before the register of pensioners was begun, as a 
pensioner, becoming a Scholar in 1638, and taking his 
degree in 1639. 

Cambridge undergraduates do not usually keep 



I.] EARLY DAYS AT SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 11 

diaries, nor after they have become Masters of Art 
are they much in the habit of giving details as to 
their academic career. Marvell is no exception to 
this provoking rule. He nowhere tells us what his 
University taught him or how. The logic of the 
schools he had no choice but to learn. Molineus, 
Peter Ramus, Seton, Keckerman were text-books of 
reputation, from one or another of which every Cam- 
bridge man had to master his simplidters, his quids, his 
secundum quids, his quotes, and his quantums. Aristotle's 
Physics, Ethics, and Politics were "tutor's books," 
and those young men who loved to hear themselves 
talk were left free to discuss, much to Hobbes's disgust, 
"the freedom of the will, incorporeal substance, ever- 
lasting nows, ubiquities, hypostases, which the people 
understand not nor will ever care for." 

In the life of Matthew Robinson,^ who went up to 
Cambridge a little later than Marvell (June 1645), 
and was probably a harder reader, we are told that 
"the strength of his studies lay in the metaphysics 
and in those subtle authors for many years which 
rendered him an irrefragable disputant de quoUbet ente, 
and whilst he was but senior freshman he was found in 
the bachelor schools, disputing ably with the best of 
the senior sophisters." Robinson despised the old- 
fashioned Ethics and Physics, but with the new Car- 
tesian or Experimental Philosophy he was inter primos. 
History, particularly the Roman, was in great favour 
at both Universities at this time, and young men were 
taught, so old Hobbes again grumbles, to despise 
monarchy " from Cicero, Seneca, Cato and other poli- 
ticians of Rome, and Aristotle of Athens, who seldom 
spake of kings but as of wolves and other ravenous 

1 Autobiography of Matthew Robinson. Edited by J. E. B. 
Mayor, Cambridge, 1856. 



12 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

beasts." ^ The Muses were never neglected at Cam- 
bridge, as the University exercises survive to prove, 
whilst modern languages, Spanish and Italian for 
example, were greedily acquired by such an eager 
spirit as Kichard Crashaw, the poet, who came into 
residence at Pembroke in 1631. There were problems 
to be " kept " in the college chapel, lectures to be 
attended, both public and private, declamations to be 
delivered, and even in the vacations the scholars were 
not exempt from " exercises " either in hall or in their 
tutors' rooms. Earnest students read their Greek 
Testaments, and even their Hebrew Bibles, and filled 
their note-books, working more hours a day than was 
good for their health, whilst the idle ones wasted their 
time as best they could in an unhealthy, over-crowded 
town, in an age which knew nothing of boating, 
billiards, or cricket. A tennis-court there was in 
Mar veil's time, for in Dr. Worthington's Diary, under 
date 3rd of April 1637, it stands recorded that on that 
day and in that place that learned man received " a 
dangerous blow on the Eye." ^ 

The only incident we know of Marvell's under- 
graduate days is remarkable enough, for, boy though 
he was, he seems, like the Gibbon of a later day, to 
have suddenly become a Roman Catholic. This occur- 
rence may serve to remind us how, during Marvell's 
time at Trinity, the University of Cambridge (ever 
the precursor in thought-movements) had a Catholic 
revival of her own, akin to that one which two hundred 
years afterwards happened at Oxford, and has left so 
much agreeable literature behind it. Fuller in his 
history of the University of Cambridge tells us a 

1 Behemoth, Hobbes' Works (Molesworth), vol. vi., see pp. 
168, 218, 233-6. 

2 Worthington's Diary, vol. i. p. 5 (Chetham Society). 



I.] EARLY DAYS AT SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 13 

little about this highly interesting and important 
movement : — 

" Now began the University (1633-4) to be much beauti- 
fied in buildings, every college either casting its skin with the 
snake, or renewing its bill with the eagle, having their courts 
or at least their fronts and Gatehouses repaired and adorned. 
But the greatest alteration was in tlieir Chapels, most of them 
being graced with the accession of organs. And seeing musick 
is one of the liberal arts, how could it be quarrelled at in an 
University if they sang with understanding both of the 
matter and manner thereof. Yet some took great distaste 
tliereat as attendancie to superstition."^ 

The chapel at Peterhouse, we read elsewhere, which 
was built in 1632, and consecrated by Bishop White of 
Ely, had a beautiful ceiling and a noble east window, 
" A grave divine," Fuller tells us, " preaching before 
the University at St. Mary's, had this smart passage 
in his Sermon — that as at the Olympian Games he was 
counted the Conqueror who could drive his chariot 
wheels nearest the mark yet so as not to hinder his 
running or to stick thereon, so he who in his Sermons 
could preach near Pojjery and yet no Popery, there was 
your man. And indeed it now began to be the general 
complaint of most moderate men that many in the 
University, both in the schools and pulpits, approached 
the opinions of the Church of Eome nearer than ever 
before." 

Archbishop Laud, unlike the bishops of Dr. Newman's 
day, favoured the Catholic revival, and when Mr. 
Bernard, the lecturer of St. Sepulchre's, London, 
preached a " No Popery " sermon at St. Mary's, 
Cambridge, he was dragged into the High Commission 
Court, and, as the hateful practice then was, a practice 
dear to the soul of Laud, was bidden to subscribe a 

1 Fuller, History of Cambridge University (1655), p. 167. 



14 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

formal recantation. This Mr. Bernard refused to do, 
though professing his sincere sorrow and penitence for 
any oversights and hasty expressions in his sermon. 
Thereupon he was sent back to prison, where he died. 
" If," adds Fuller, " he was miserably abused in prison 
by the keepers (as some have reported) to the shorten- 
ing of his life. He that maketh inquisition for blood 
either hath or will be a revenger thereof." ^ 

By the side of this grim story the much-Avritten-about 
incidents of the Oxford Movement seem trivial enough. 

Not a few Cambridge scholars of this period, 
Richard Crashaw among the number, found permanent 
refuge in Rome. 

The story of Marvell's conversion is emphatic but 
vague in its details. The "Jesuits," who were well 
represented in Cambridge at the time, are said to 
have persuaded him to leave Cambridge secretly, and 
to take refuge in one of their houses in London. 
Thither the elder Marvell followed in pursuit, and 
after search came across his son in a bookseller's shop, 
where he succeeded both in convincing the boy of his 
errors and in persuading him to return to Trinity. 
An odd story, and not, as it stands, very credible ; but 
Mr. Grosart discovered among the Marvell papers at 
Hull a fragment of a letter without signature, address, 
or date, which throws some sort of light on the inci- 
dent. This letter was evidently, as Mr. Grosai't 
surmises, sent to the elder Marvell by some similarly 
afflicted parent. In its fragmentary state the letter 
reads as follows : — 

" Worthy S"", — M'' Breerecliffe being w"' me to-day, I 
related vnto him a fearfull passage lately at Cambridg touch- 
ing a Sonne of mine, Bachelor of Arts in Katherine Hall, yv"^ 

1 Fuller, p. 166. 



1.] EARLY DAYS AT SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 16 

was this. He was lately inuited to a supper in towne by a 
gentlewoman, where was one M"^ Nichols a felow of Peter- 
house, and another or two masters of arts, I know not directly 
whether felowes or not : my sonne hauing noe p'ferment, but 
lining meerely of my penny, they pressed him much to come 
to Hue at their house, and for chamber and extraordinary 
bookes they promised farre: and then earnestly moued him 
to goe to Somerset house, where they could doe much for 
p'ferring him to some eminent place, and in conclusion to 
popish arguments to seduce him soe rotten and vnsauory as 
being ouerheard it was brought in question before the heads 
of the Uniuersity : Dr. Cosens, being Vice Chancelor noe 
punishment is inioined him : but on Ash-wednesday next a 
recantation in regent house of some popish tenets Nicols let 
fall : I p'ceive by M^ Breercliffe some such j)rank vsed towards 
y"^ Sonne : I desire to know what y'^ did therin : thinking I 
cannot doe god better seruice then bring it vppon the stage 
either in Parliament if it hold : or informing some Lords of 
the Counsail to whom I stand much oblieged if a bill in 
Starchamber be meete To terrify others by making these some 
publique spectacle : for if such fearf ull practises may goe vn- 
punished I take care whether I may send a child . . . the 
lord." 1 

The reference to Dr. Cosens, or Cosin, being Vice- 
chancellor gives a clue to the date, for Cosin was chosen 
Vice-Chancellor on the 4th of November 1639.^ 

Though we can know nothing of the elder Marvell's 
methods of re-conversion, they were more successful 
than the elder Gibbon's, who, as we know, packed the 
future historian off to Lausanne and a Swiss pastor's 
house. What Gibbon became on leaving off his 
Romanism we can guess for ourselves, whereas 
Marvell, once out of the hands of these very shadowy 
" Jesuits," remained the staunchest of Christian Pro- 
testants to the end of his days. 

1 Grosart, I., xxviii. 

2 See Worthington's Diary, vol. i. p. 7. 



16 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

This strange incident, and two college exercises or 
poems, one in Greek, the other in Latin, both having 
reference to an addition to the Royal Family, and 
appearing in the Musa Cantabrigiensis for 1637, are all 
the materials that exist for weaving the story of 
Marvell, the Cambridge undergraduate. The Latin 
verses, which are Horatian in style, contain one 
pretty stanza, composed apparently before the sex of 
the new-born infant was known at Cambridge. 

" Sive felici Carohim figura 
Parvuhis princeps imitetur ahiiae 
Sive Mariae decoret puellam 

Dulcis imago." 

After taking his Bachelor's degree in 1639, Marvell, 
being still a Scholar of the college, must have gone 
away, for the Conclusion Book of Trinity, under date 
September 24, 1641, records as follows : — 

" It is agreed by y^ Master and 8 seniors y' M'' Carter and 
D'' Wakefields, D-" IMarvell, D"^ Waterhouse, and D"- Maye 
in regard y' some of them are reported to be married and y' 
others look not after yeir days nor Acts shall receave no more 
benefitt of y^ Coll and shall be out of yer places unless y" 
shew just cause to y'^ Coll for y^ contrary in 3 months." 

Dr. Lort, in his amiable letter of 1765, already 
mentioned, points out that this entry contains no 
reflection on Marvell's morals, but shows that he was 
given " notice to quit " for non-residence, " then much 
more strictly enjoined than it is now." The days 
referred to in the entry were, so the master obligingly 
explains, " the certain number allowed by statute to 
absentees," whilst the " acts mean the Exercises also 
enjoyned by the statutes." Dr. Lort adds, " It does 
not appear, by any subsequent entry, whether Marvell 
did or did not comply with this order." We may 



I.] EARLY DAYS AT SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 17 

now safely assume lie did not. Marvell's Cambridge 
days were over. 

The vacations, no inconsiderable part of the year, 
were probably spent by Marvell under his father's 
roof at Hull, where his two elder sisters were married 
and settled. It is not to be wondered at that Andrew 
Marvell should, for so many years, have represented 
Hull in the House of Commons, for both he and his 
family were well known in the town. The elder 
Marvell added to his reputation as a teacher and 
preacher the character of a devoted servant of his 
flock in the hour of danger. The plague twice visited 
Hull during the time of the elder Marvell, first in 
1635 and again in 1638. In those days men might 
well pray to be delivered from "plague, pestilence, 
and famine." Hull suffered terribly on both occasions. 
We have seen, in comparatively recent times, the effect 
of the cholera upon large towns, and the plague was 
worse than the cholera many times over. The Hull 
preacher, despite the stigma oi facet iousness, which still 
clings to him, stuck to his post, visiting the sick, bury- 
ing the dead, and even, which seems a little superfluous, 
preaching and afterwards printing " by request " their 
funeral sermons. A brave man, indeed, and one reserved 
for a tragic end. 

In April 1638 the poet's mother died. In the follow- 
ing November the elder Marvell married a widow lady, 
but his own end was close upon him. The earliest 
consecutive account of this strange event is in Gent's 
History of Hall (1735) : — " This year, 1640, the Eev. 
Mr. Andrew Marvell, Lecturer of Hull, sailing over 
the Humber in company with Madame Skinner of 
Thornton College and a young beautiful couple who 
were going to be wedded ; a speedy Fate prevented 
the designed happy union thro' a violent storm which 



18 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. i. 

overset the boat and put a period to all their lives, nor 
were there any remains of them or the vessel ever after 
found, tho' earnestly sought for on distant shores." 

Thus died by drowning a brave man, a good Chris- 
tian, and an excellent clergyman of the Eeformed 
Church of England. The plain narrative just quoted 
has been embroidered by many long-subsequent writers 
in the interests of those who love presentiments and 
ghostly intimations of impending events, and in one 
of these versions it is recorded, that though the morn- 
ing was clear, the breeze fair, and the company gay, 
yet when stepping into the boat " the reverend man 
exclaimed, ' Ho for Heaven,' and threw his staff ashore 
and left it to Providence to fulfil its awful warning." 

So melancholy an occurrence naturally excited great 
attention, and long lingered in local memories. Every- 
body in Hull knew who was their member's father. 

There is an obstinate tradition quite unverifiable 
that Mrs. Skinner, the mother of the beautiful young 
lady who was drowned with the elder Marvell, adopted 
the young Marvell as a son, sending to Cambridge for 
him after his father's death, and providing him with 
the means of travel, and that afterwards she bequeathed 
him her estate. Whether there is any truth in this 
story cannot now be ascertained. The Skinners were 
a well-known Hull family, one of them, a brother of 
that Cyriac Skinner who was urged by Milton in 
immortal verse to enjoy himself whilst the mood was 
on him, having been Mayor of Hull. The lady, doubt- 
less, had money, and Andrew Marvell was in need of 
money, and appears to have been supplied with it. It 
is quite possible the tradition is true. 



CHAPTER II 

"the happy garden-state" 

The seventeenth century was the century of travel 
for educated Englishmen — of long, leisurely travel. 
Milton's famous Italian tour lasted fifteen months. 
John Evelyn's Wander-Jalire occupied four years. 
Andrew Marvell lived abroad in France, Spain, 
Holland, and Italy from 1642 to 1646, and we have 
Milton's word for it that when the traveller returned 
he was well acquainted with the French, Dutch, 
Spanish, and Italian languages. Andrew Marvell was 
a highly cultivated man, living in a highly cultivated 
age, in daily converse with scholars, poets, philo- 
sophers, and men of very considerable scientific attain- 
ments. In reading Clarendon and Burnet, and whilst 
tu.rning over Aubrey's delightful gossip, it is impos- 
sible not to be struck with the width and variety of 
the learning as well as with the wit of the period. 
Intellectually it was a great age. 

No record remains of Marvell's travels during these 
years. Up and down his writings the careful reader 
will come across pleasant references to foreign manners 
and customs, betokening the keen humorous observer, 
and the possession of that wide-eyed faculty that takes 
a pleasure, half contemplative, half the result of animal 
spirits, in watching the way of the world wherever you 
may chance to be. Of another and an earlier traveller, 
Sir Henry Wotton, we read in " Walton's LifeP 

19 



20 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

" And whereas he was noted in his youth to have a sharp 
wit and apt to jest, that by time, travel, and conversation was 
so polished and made useful, that his company seemed to be 
one of the delights of mankind." 

In all Marvell's work, as poet, as Parliamentarian, 
as controversialist, we shall see the travelled man. 
Certainly no one ever more fully grasped the sense 
of the famous sentence given by Wotton to Milton, 
when the latter was starting on his travels : " Ipensieri 
stretti ed il viso sciolto." 

Marvell was in Rome about 1645. I can give no 
other date during the whole four years. This, our 
only date, rests upon an assumption. In Marvell's 
earliest satirical poem he gives an account of a visit 
he paid in Eome to the unlucky poetaster Flecknoe, 
who was not in Rome until 1645. If, therefore, the 
poem records an actual visit, it follows that the author 
of the poem was in Rome at the same time. It is not 
very near, but it is as near as we can get. 

Richard Flecknoe was an Irish priest of blameless 
life, with a passion for scribbling and for printing. 
His exquisite reason for both these superfluous acts is 
worth quoting : — 

" I write chiefly to avoid idleness, and ]3rint to avoid the im- 
putation (of idleness), and as others do it to live after they are 
dead, I do it only not to be thought dead whilst I am alive." ^ 

Such frankness should have disarmed ridicule, but 
somehow or another this amiable man came to be 
regarded as the type of a dull author, and his name 
passed into a proverb for stupidity, so much so that 
when Dryden in 1682 was casting about how best to 
give pain to Shadwell, he devised the plan of his famous 

iFor an account of Flecknoe, see Southey's Omniana, i. 105. 
Lamb placed some fine lines of Flecknoe's at the beginning of 
the Essay A Quakers' Meeting. 



II.] "THE HAPPY GARDEN-STATE" 21 

satire, " MacFlecknoe," where in biting verse he de- 
scribes Flecknoe (who was happily dead) as an aged 
Prince — 

" Who like Augustus young 
Was called to empire and had governed long ; 
In prose and verse was owned, without dispute, 
Through all the realms of nonsense absolute." 

Dryden goes on to picture the aged Flecknoe, 

" pondering which of all his sons was fit 
To reign and wage immortal war with Wit," 

and fixing on Shadwell. 

" Shadwell alone my perfect image bears. 
Mature in dulness from his tender years ; 
Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he 
Who stands confirmed in full stupidity : 
The rest to some faint meaning make pretence. 
But Shadwell never deviates into sense." 

Thus has it come about that Flecknoe, the Irish 
priest, whom Marvell visited in his Roman garret in 
1645, bears a name ever memorable in literature. 

Marvell's own poem, though eclijised by the splen- 
dour of Glorious John's resounding lines, has an 
interest of its own as being, in its roughly humorous 
way,a forerunner of the "Dunciad" and "Grub Street" 
literature, by which in sundry moods 'tis "pleasure to 
be bound." It describes seeking out the poetaster in 
his lodging " three staircases high," at the sign of the 
Pelican, in a room so small that it seemed " a coffin set 
in the stair's head." No sooner was the rhymer un- 
earthed than straightway he began to recite his poetry 
in dismal tones, much to his visitor's dismay : — 

" But I who now imagin'd myself brought 
To my last trial, in a serious th ought 
Calm'd the disorders of my youthful breast 
And to my martyrdom prepared rest. 



22 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

Only this frail ambition did remain, 
The last distemper of the sober brain, 
That there had been some present to assure 
The future ages how I did endure." 

To stop the cataract of "hideous verse," Marvell 
invited the scarecrow to dinner, and waits while he 
dresses. As they turn to leave, for the room is so 
small that the man who comes in last must be the first 
to go out, they meet a friend of the poet on the stairs, 
who makes a third at dinner. After dinner Flecknoe 
produces ten quires of paper, from which the friend 
proceeds to read, but so infamously as to excite their 
author's rage : — 

" But all his praises could not now appease 
The provok't Author, whom it did displease 
To hear his verses by so just a curse 
That were ill made, condemned to be read worse: 
And how (impossible !) he made yet more 
Absurdities in them than were before : 
For his untun'd voice did fall or raise 
As a deaf man upon the Viol plays, 
Making the half-points and the periods run 
Confus'der than the atoms in the sun : 
Thereat the poet swell'd with anger full," 

and after violent exclamations retires in dudgeon back 
to his room. The faithful friend is in despair. What 
is he to do to make peace ? " Who would commend 
his mistress now ? " Marvell 

" counselled him to go in time 
Ere the fierce poet's anger turned to rhyme." 

The advice was taken, and Marvell, finding himself 
at last free from boredom, went off to St. Peter's to 
return thanks. 

This poem is but an unsatisfactory souvenir de voyage, 
but it is all there is. 



II.] "THE HAPPY GARDEN-STATE" 23 

What Marvell was doing during the stirring years 
1646-1650 is not known. Even in the most troubled 
times men go about their business, and our poet was 
always a man of affairs. As for his opinions during 
these 3^ears, we can only guess at them from those to 
which he afterwards gave expression. Marvell was 
neither a Republican nor a Puritan. Like his father 
before him, he was a Protestant and a member of the 
Reformed Church of England. He stood for both 
King and Parliament. Archbishop Laud he distrusted, 
and it may well be detested, but good church- 
men have often distriisted and even detested their 
archbishops. Mr. Gladstone had no great regard for 
Archbishop Tait. Before the Act of Uniformity and 
the repressive legislation that followed upon its heels 
had driven English dissent into its final moulds, it 
was not doctrine but ceremonies that disturbed men's 
minds ; and Marvell belonged to that school of English 
churchmen, by no means the least distinguished school, 
which was not disposed to quarrel with their fellow- 
Christians over white surplices, the ring in matrimony, 
or the attitude during Holy Communion. He shared 
the belief of a contemporary that no system is bad 
enough to destroy a good man, or good enough to 
save a bad one. 

The Civil War was to Marvell what it was to most 
wise men not devoured by faction — a deplorable event. 
Twenty years after he wrote in the Rehearsal Trans- 
prosed : — 

" Whether it be a war of religion or of liberty it is not 
worth the labour to inquire. Whichsoever was at the top, the 
other was at the bottom ; but upou considering all, I think 
the cause was too good to have been fought for. Men ought 
to have trusted God — they ought to have trusted the King 
with that whole matter. The arms of the Church are prayers 



24 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

and tears, the arms of the subject are patience and petitions. 
The King himself being of so accurate and piercing a judg- 
ment would soon have felt it where it stuck. For men may 
spai'e their pains when Nature is at work, and the world will 
notgo the fasterforour driving. Even as his present Majesty's 
happy Restoration did itself, so all things else happen in their 
best and proper time, without any heed of our officionsness." ''■ 

In the face of this passage and many another of the 
like spirit, it is puzzling to find such a man, for ex- 
ample, as Thomas Baker, the ejected non-juring Fellow 
and historian of St. John's College, Cambridge (1656- 
1740), writing of Marvell as '' that bitter republican" ; 
and Dryden, who probably knew Marvell, comparing 
his controversial pamphlets with those of Martin Mar- 
Prelate, or at all events speaking of Martin Mar- 
Prelate as " the Marvell of those times." ^ A somewhat 
anti-prelatical note runs through Marvell's writings, 
but it is a familiar enough note in the works of the 
English laity, and by no means dissevers its possessor 
from the Anglican Church. But there are some 
heated expressions in the satires which probably gave 
rise to the belief that Marvell was a Republican.^ 

During the Commonwealth Marvell was content to 
be a civil servant. He entertained for the Lord-Pro- 
tector the same kind of admiration that such a loyalist 
as Chateaubriand could not help feeling for Napoleon. 
Even Clarendon's pedantic soul occasionally vibrates as 
he writes of Oliver, and compares his reputation in 

1 Grosart, vol. iii. p. 175. 

2 See preface to Religio Laid, Scott's Dryden, vol.x. p. 27. 

8 Jeremy Collier in bis Historical Dictionary (1705) describes 
Marvell, to wbom he allows more space (tbougb it is but a few 
lines) than he does to Sliakespeare, " as to bis opinion be was 
a dissenter." In Collier's opinion Marvell may liave been no 
better than a dissenter, but in fact he was a Churchman all bis 
life, and it was Collier who lived to become a non-juror and a 
dissenter, and a schismatical bishop to boot. 



n]. "THE HAPPY GARDEN-STATE" 25 

foreign courts with tliat of his own royal master. 
When the Restoration came Marvell rejoiced. Two 
old-established things had been destroyed by Cromwell 
— Kings and Parliaments, and Marvell was glad to see 
them both back again in England. 

Some verses of Marvell's attributable to this period 
(1646-1650) show him keeping what may be called 
Royalist company. With a dozen other friends of 
Richard Lovelace, the Cavalier poet and the author of 
two of the most famous stanzas in English verse, 
Marvell contributed some commendatory lines ad- 
dressed to his ''noble friend, Mr. Richard Lovelace, 
upon his Poems," which appeared with the poems 
themselves in that year of fate, 1649. "After the 
murder of the King," says Anthony Wood, " Lovelace 
was set at liberty, and having by that time consumed 
all his estate, grew very melancholy, became very poor 
in body and purse, was the object of charity, went in 
ragged clothes (whereas when he was in glory he wore 
cloth of gold and silver), and mostly lodged in obscure 
and dirty places, more befitting the worst of beggars 
and poorest of servants." 

Then it was that Lucasta made its first appearance. 
When the fortunes of the gallant poet were at their 
lowest and never to revive, Marvell seizes the occasion 
to deplore the degeneracy of the times, a familiar theme 
with poets : — 

" Our civil wars have lost the civic crown, 
He highest builds who with most art destroys, 
And against others' fame his own employs." 

He then glances scornfully at the new Presbyterian 
censorship of the press : — 

" The barbed censurers begin to look 
Like the grim consistory on thy book, 
And on each line cast a reforming eye," 



26 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

and suggests that Lucasta is in danger because in 1642 
its author had been imprisoned by order of the House 
of Commons for presenting a petition from Kent which 
prayed for the restoration of the Book of Common 
Prayer. This danger is, however, overcome by the 
ladies, who rise in arms to defend their favourite poet. 

" But when the beauteous Ladies came to know 
That their dear Lovelace was endangered so, 
Lovelace that thaw'd the most congealed breast, 
He who lov'd best and them defended best, 
They all in mutiny, though yet undrest, 
Sally'd." 

One of them challenged Marvell as to whether he 
had not been of the poet's traducers, but he answered 
No! 

" O No, mistake not, I reply'd, for I 
In your defence or in his cause would die. 
But he, secure of glory and of time, 
Above their envy or my aid doth climb. 
Him, bravest men and fairest nymphs approve. 
His book in them finds Judgment, with you. Love." 

Lovelace did not live to see the Restoration, but 
died in a mean lodging near Shoe Lane in April 1658, 
and was buried in St. Bridget's Church. Let us in- 
dulge the hope that the friends who occupied so many 
of the introductory pages of Lovelace's Lucasta occa- 
sionally enlivened the solitude and relieved the distress 
of the poet whose praises they had once sung with so 
much vigour. As Marvell was undoubtedly a friendly 
man, and one who loved to be alone with his friends, 
and had never any house of his own to keep up, living 
for the most part in hired lodgings, it would be unkind 
to doubt that he at least did not forget Lovelace in his 
poverty and depression of spirit. 



II.] "THE HAPPY GAEDEN-STATE " 27 

In 1649 thirty-three poets combined to weep over 
the early grave of the Lord Henry Hastings, the eldest 
son of the sixth Earl of Huntingdon, who died of the 
smallpox in the twentieth year of his age. Not even 
this plentiful discharge of poets' tears should rob the 
young nobleman of his claim to be regarded as a fine 
example of the great learning, accomplishments, and 
high spirits of the age. We can still produce the 
thirty-three poets, but what young nobleman is there 
who can boast svich erudition as had rewarded the 
scorned delights and the laborious days of this Lord 
Hastings ? We have at least the satisfaction of know- 
ing that did such a one exist he probably would not 
die of the smallpox. Among the poets who wept on 
this occasion were Herrick, Sir John Denham, Andrew 
Marvell, and John Dryden, then a Westminster school- 
boy, whose description of the smallpox is as bad as the 
disease. 

Marvell's verses begin very prettily and soon intro- 
duce a characteristic touch : — 

" Go, stand betwixt the Morning and the Flowers, 
And ere they fall arrest the early showers, 
Hastings is dead ; and we disconsolate 
With early tears must mourn his early fate." 

In 1650 Marvell, then in his twenty-ninth year, 
went to live with Lord Fairfax at Nunappleton House 
in Yorkshire, as tutor to the only child and daughter 
of the house, Mary Fairfax, aged twelve years (born 
30th July 1638). This proved to be a great event in 
Marvell's life as a poet, and it happened at an epoch 
in the distinguished career of the famous Parliamen- 
tarian general 

" Whose name in arms through Europe rings." 

Lord Fairfax, though he had countenanced, if not 



28 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

approved, the trial and deposition of the king, had 
resolutely held himself aloof from the proceedings 
which, beginning on Saturday the 20th of January 
1649, terminated so dismally on Tuesday the 30th. 
The strange part played by Lady Fairfax on the 
first day of the so-called trial (though it was no 
greater a travesty of justice than many a real trial 
both before and after) is one of the best-known 
stories in English history. There are several versions 
of it. Having provided herself with a seat in 
a small gallery in Westminster Hall, just above the 
heads of the judges, when her husband's name was 
called out as one of the commissioners, the intrepid 
lady (no Cavalier's dame, be it remembered, but a true 
blue Presbyterian), a brave soldier's daughter, cried 
out, " Lord Fairfax is not here ; he will never sit 
among you. You do wrong to name him as a sitting 
Commissioner." This is Rushworth's version, and he 
was present. Clarendon, who was not present, being 
abroad at the time, reports the words as, " He has 
more wit than to be here." 

Later on in the day, when the President Bradshaw 
interrupted the king and peremptorily bade him to 
answer the charges exhibited against him "in the 
name of the Commons of England assembled, and of 
the people of England," Lady Fairfax again rose to 
her feet and exclaimed, " It's a lie ! Not half the 
people. Where are they and their consents ? Oliver 
Cromwell is a traitor." 

Lieutenant-Colonel Axtell, who during the trial was 
in command of a regiment in Westminster and charged 
by his military superior. Lord Fairfax himself, with 
the duty of maintaining order, hearing this disturb- 
ance, went forward and told Lady Fairfax to hold 
her tongue, sound advice which she appears to have 



II.] "THE HAPPY GARDEN-STATE" 29 

taken. After the Kestoration Axtell was put to his 
trial as a "regicide." His defence, which was, that as 
a soldier he obeyed his orders, and was no more guilty 
than his general, Lord Fairfax, was not listened to, 
and he was sentenced to death, a fate which he met 
like the brave man he was. 

Although Fairfax did not immediately resign his 
command after the king's death, from that moment 
he lost heart in the cause. Lady Fairfax, whose loy- 
alty to Charles may have been quickened by her dis- 
like of Oliver, had great influence with him, and it 
may well be that his conscience pricked him. The 
rupture came in June 1650, when Charles's son made 
his appearance in Scotland and his peace with the 
Presbyterians, subscribing with inward emotions it 
would be unkind to attempt to describe the Solemn 
League and Covenant, and attending services and 
listening to sermons the length of which, at least, he 
never forgot. War was plainly imminent between the 
two countries. The question was, who should begin ? 
Cromwell, who had hurried home from Ireland, 
Lambert, and Harrison were all keen to strike the 
first blow. Fairfax felt a scruple, and in those days 
scruples counted. Was there, he asked, a just cause 
for an invasion of Scotland? A committee was ap- 
pointed, consisting of the three warriors above-named 
with St. John and Whitelock, to confer with the Lord- 
General and satisfy him of the lawfulness of the under 
taking. The six met, and having first prayed — Oliver 
praying first — they proceeded to a discussion which 
may be read at length in Whitelock's Memorials, 
vol. iii. p. 207. The substance of their talk was 
as follows : Fairfax's scruple proved to be that both 
they and the Scots had joined in the Solemn League 
and Covenant, and that, therefore, until Scotland 



30 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

assumed the offensive, there was no cause for an 
invasion. Cromwell's retort, after a preliminary 
quibble, was practical enough, " War is inevitable. 
Is it better to have it in the bowels of another's 
country or in one's own ? In one or other it must 
be." Fairfax's scruple, however, withstood, this battery, 
though it was strongly enforced by Harrison, who, 
in reply to the Lord-General's question, "What was 
the warrant for the assumption that Scotland meant 
to fall upon England ? " inquired, if Scotland did not 
mean to invade England, for whose benefit were levies 
being made and soldiers enlisted. 

Fairfax proved immovable. " Every man," said he, 
" must stand or fall by his own conscience " ; and as 
he offered to lay down his command, there was nothing 
for it but to accept the resignation and appoint his 
successor. This was speedily done, and on the 28th of 
June 1650 " Oliver Cromwell, Esquire," was appointed 
Captain-General and Commander-in-chief of all the 
forces. On 16th July Cromwell crossed the Tweed, 
and on the 3rd of September the Lord delivered Leslie 
into his hands at Dunbar. 

It was in these circumstances that Lord Fairfax and 
his energetic lady and only child went back to their 
Yorkshire home in the midsummer of 1650, taking 
Marvell with them to instruct the Lady Mary in the 
tongues. 

Nunappleton House is in the Ainstey of York, a 
pleasant bit of country bounded by the rivers Ouse, 
Wharfe, and Nidd. The modern traveller, as his train 
rushes north, whilst shut up in his corridor-carriage 
with his rug, his pipe, and his novel, passes at no great 
distance from the house on the way between Selby 
and York. The old house, as it was in Marvell's 
time, is thus described by Captain Markham, who had 



II.] "THE HArPY GARDEN-STATE" 31 

a print to help him, in his delightful Life of the Great 
Lord Fairfax : — 

" It was a picturesque brick mansion with stone copings 
and a high steep roof, and consisted of a centre and two 
wings at rigiit angles, forming three sides of a square, facing 
to the nortli. Tlie great hall or gallery occupied the centre 
between the two wings. It was fifty yards long, and was 
adorned with thirty shields in wood, painted with the arms 
of the family. In the three rooms there were chimney-pieces 
of delicate marble of various colours, and many fine i^ortraits 
on the walls. The central part of the house was surrounded 
by a cupola, and clustering chimneys rose in the two wings. 
A noble park with splendid oak-trees, and containing 300 
head of deer, stretched away to the north, while on the south 
side were the ruins of the old Nunnery, the flower-garden, 
and the low meadows called i7igs extending to the banks of 
the Wharfe. In this flower-garden the General took especial 
delight. The flowers were planted in masses, tulips, pinks, 
and roses, each in separate beds, which were cut into the shape 
of forts with five bastions. General Lambert, whom Fairfax 
had reared as a soldier, also loved his flowers, and excelled 
both in cultivating them and in painting them from Nature. 
Lord Fairfax only went to Denton, the favourite seat of his 
grandfather, when the floods were out over the mgs at Nun- 
appleton, and he also occasionally resorted to his house at 
Bishop Hill in York." i 

In this garden the muse of Andrew Marvell 
blossomed like the cherry-tree. 

Lord -Fairfax, though furious in war, and badly- 
wounded in many a fierce engagement, was, when 
otherwise occupied, a man of quiet literary tastes, 
and a good bit of a collector and virtuoso. Some of 
the rare books and manuscripts he had around him at 
Nunappleton are now in the Bodleian, the treasures of 
which he had protected in troubled times. He loved 

1 Life of Lord Fairfax, by C. R. Markham (1870), p. 365. 



32 ANDEEW MARVELL [chap. 

to handle medals and coins, and knew the points of old 
engravings. He wrote a history of the Christian Church 
down to our own ill-conducted Eeformation, and com- 
posed a complete metrical version of the Psalms of 
David and of the Song of Solomon. These and many- 
other productions, which he characterised as "The 
Employment of my Solitude," still remain in his own 
handwriting. Amongst them, Yorkshire men will hear 
with pleasure, is a " Treatise on the breeding of the 
Horse." 

Of the quality of his wife we have already had a 
touch. She was one of the four daughters of Lord 
Vere of Tilbury, who came of a fine fighting family, 
and whose daughters had a roughish bringing-up, 
chiefly in the Netherlands. None of the daughters 
were reckoned beautiful, either in face or figure, and 
it may well be that Lady Fairfax had something about 
her of the old campaigner; but of her courage, sincerity, 
and goodness there can be no question. Her loyalty 
was no sickly fruit of " Church Principles," for her 
strong intelligence rejected scornfully the slavish doc- 
trines, alien to our political constitution, of divine 
right and passive obedience ; but a loyalty, none the 
less, it was, of a very valuable kind. She was fond of 
argument, and with Lady Fairfax at Nunappleton 
there was never likely to be any dearth of sensible 
talk and lively reminiscence. The tragedy of the 30th 
of January could never be forgotten, and it is possible 
that Marvell's most famous verses, so nobly descriptive 
of the demeanour of the king on that memorable 
occasion, derived their inspiration from discourse at 
Nuuappleton. 

Of the Lady Mary, aged twelve, we have no direct 
testimony. When she grew up and had her j)ortrait 
painted she stands revealed as a stout young woman 



11.] "THE HAPPY GARDEN-STATE" 33 

with a plain good-natured face. The poor soul needed 
all the good-nature heaven had bestowed upon her, 
for she had to bear the misery and disgrace which 
were the inevitable marriage-portion of the woman 
whose ill-luck it was to become the wife of George 
Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham. Somebody 
seems to have taught her philosophy, for she bore her 
misfortunes as best became a great lady, living as one 
who had sorrow but no grievance. The duke died in 
1688; she lived on till 1704. She was ever a good 
friend to another ill-used solitary wife, Catherine of 
Braganza. Marvell had every reason to be proud of 
his pupil. 

Beside the actual inmates of the great house, the 
whole countryside SAvarmed with Fairfaxes. At the 
Eectory of Bolton Percy was the late Lord-General's 
uncle, Henry Fairfax, and his two sons, Henry, who 
succeeded to the title, and the better-known Brian, 
the biographer of the Duke of Buckingham. At 
Stentou, four miles off, lived the widow of the gallant 
Sir William Fairfax, who died, covered with wounds, 
in 1644 before Montgomery Castle. There were two 
sons and two daughters at Stenton, whilst Charles 
Fairfax, another uncle, and the lawyer and genealogist 
of the family, lived at no great distance with no less 
than fourteen children. There were also sisters of 
Lord Fairfax, with families of their own, all settled in 
the same part of the county. 

Such were the agreeable surroundings of our poet for 
two years, 1650-1652. I must leave it to the imagina- 
tions of my readers to fill up the picture, for excepting 
the poems, which we may safely assume were written 
at Nunappleton House, and — who can doubt it? — read 
aloud to its inmates, there is nothing more to be said. 

Before considering the Nunappleton poetry, a word 



34 ANDEEVV MARVELL [chap. 

must be got in of bibliography. College exercises and 
complimentary verses excepted, Marvell printed none 
of his verse under his own name in his lifetime. So 
far as his themes were political there is no need to 
wonder at this. Indeed, the wonder is how, despite 
their anonymity, their author kept his ears ; but why 
the Nunappleton verse should have remained in manu- 
script for more than thirty years is hard to explain. 

Until Pope took his muse to market, poetry, apart 
from the drama, had no direct commercial value, or 
one too small to be ranked as a motive for publication. 
None the less, the age loved distinction and appre- 
ciated wit, and to be known as a poet whoses verses 
" numbered good intellects " was to gain the entree to 
the society of men both of intellect and fashion, and 
also, not infrequently, snug berths in the public 
service, and secretaryships to foreign missions and 
embassies. Thus there was always, in addition to 
natural vanity, a strong motive for a seventeenth- 
century poet to publish his poems. To-day one would 
hesitate to recommend a young man who wanted to 
get on in the world to publish a volume of verse ; but 
the age of " wit " and " parts " is over. 

It was not till 1681 — three years after Mar veil's 
death — that the small folio appeared with a fine por- 
trait, still dear to the collector, which contains for 
the first time what may be called the " garden-poetry " 
of our author, together with some specimens of his 
political and satirical versification. 

Marvell's most famous poem — The Ode upon Crom- 
ivelVs Return from Ireland — is not included in the 
1681 volume, and remained in manuscript until 1776, 
as also did the poem upon Cromwell's death. 

The remainder of the political poems, which had 
made their first appearance as broadsheets, were 



II.] "THE HAPPY GARDEN-STATE" 35 

reprinted after the Revolution in the well-known Col- 
lection of Poems on Affairs of State} These verses were 
never owned by Marvell, and it is probable that some 
of them, though attributed to him, are not his at 
all. We have only tradition to go by. In the case 
of political satires, squibs, epigrams, rough popular 
occasional rhymes flung off both in haste and heat to 
be sold with old ballads in the market-place, we need 
not seek for better evidence than tradition, which 
indeed is often the only external evidence we have for 
the authorship of much more important things. 

Now to return to the Nunappleton poetry. 

In a poem of 776 lines Marvell tells the story and 
describes the charms of the house which Lord Fairfax 
built for himself during the war, and to which, as just 
narrated, he retired in the summer of 1650. The story 
is only too familiar a one, being writ large over many 
a fine property. Appleton House was Church loot. In 
the time of Henry, " the majestic lord that burst the 
bonds of Rome," the old house at Nunappleton was 
a Cistercian nunnery, a religious house. In 1542 
the community was suppressed and its property 
appropriated by the great-grandfather of the Lord- 
General — one Sir Thomas Fairfax. The religious 
buildings were pulled down and a new secular house 
rose in their place. In these bare and sordid facts 
there is not much room for poetry, but there is a 
story thrown in. Shortly before 1518 a Yorkshire 
heiress, bearing the unromantic name of Isabella 
Thwaites, was living in the Cistercian abbey, under 
the guardianship of the abbess, the Lady Anna 
Langton. Property under the care of the Church is 
always supposed to be in danger, and the Lady Anna 
was freely credited with the desire to make a nun of 
1 The fifth edition is dated 1703. 



36 ANDEEW MARVELL [chap. 

her ward, and so keep her broad acres in Wharfedale 
and her messuages in York for the use of Mother 
Church. None the less, the young lady was allowed 
to go about and visit her neighbours, and whilst so 
doing she fell in love with Sir William Fairfax, or he 
fell in love with her or with her estates. Thereupon, 
so the story proceeds, the abbess kept her ward a 
close prisoner within the nunnery walls. Legal pro- 
ceedings were taken, but in the end the privacy of the 
nunnery was invaded, and Miss Thwaites was abducted 
and married to Sir William Fairfax at the church of 
Bolton Percy. The lady abbess had to submit to vis 
major, but worse days were in front of her, for she 
lived on to see the nunnery itself despoiled, and the 
fair domains she had during a long life preserved 
and maintained for religious uses handed over to the 
son of her former ward, Isabella Thwaites. 

Our poet begins by referring to the modest dimen- 
sions of the house, and the natural charms of its 
surroundings : — 

" The house was built upon the place, 
Only as for a mark of grace, 
And for an inn to entertain 
Its Lord awhile, but not remain. 
Him Bishop's-hill or Denton may, 
Or Billborow, better hold than they : 
But Nature here liath been so free. 
As if she said, ' Leave this to me.' 
Art would more neatly have defac'd 
What she had laid so sweetly waste 
In fragrant gardens, shady woods, 
Deep meadows, and transparent floods." 

And then starts the story : — 

" While, with slow eyes, we these survey, 
And on each pleasant footstep stay, 



II.] "THE HAPPY GAKDEN-STATE " 37 

We opportunely may relate 

The progress of this house's fate. 

A nunnery first gave it birth, 

(For virgin buildings oft brought forth) 

And all that neighbour-ruin shows 

The quarries whence this dwelling rose. 

Near to this gloomy cloister's gates, 

There dwelt the blooming virgin Thwaites, 

Fair beyond measure, and an heir, 

Which might deformity make fair; 

And oft she spent the summer's suns 

Discoursing with the subtle Nuns, 

Whence, in these words, one to her weav'd, 

As 'twere by chance, thoughts long conceiv'd : 

'Within this holy leisure, we 

Live innocently, as you see. 

These walls restrain the world without, 

But hedge our liberty about ; 

These bars inclose that wilder den 

Of those wild creatures, called men, 

The cloister outward shuts its gates, 

And, from us, locks on them the grates. 

Here we, in shining armour white, 

Like virgin amazons do fight, 

And our chaste lamps we hourly trim. 

Lest the great Bridegroom find them dim. 

Our orient breaths perfumed are 

With incense of incessant prayer; 

And holy-water of our tears 

Most strangely our complexion clears ; 

Not tears of grief, but such as those 

With which calm pleasure overflows ; 

Or pity, when we look on you 

That live without this happy vow. 

How should we grieve that must be seen 

Each one a spouse, and each a queen. 

And can in heaven hence behold 

Our brighter robes and crowns of gold ! 

When we have prayed all our beads, 

Some one the holy Legend reads, 



38 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

While all the rest with needles paint 

The face and graces of the Saint ; 

Some of your features, as we sewed, 

Through every shrine should be bestowed, 

And in one beauty we would take 

Enough a thousand Saints to make. 

And (for I dare not quench the fire 

That me does for your good inspire) 

'Twere sacrilege a man to admit 

To holy things for heaven fit. 

I see the angels in a crown 

On you the lilies showering down ; 

And round about you glory breaks, 

That something more than human speaks. 

All beauty when at such a height, 

Is so already consecrate. 

Fairfax I know, and long ere this 

Have marked the youth, and what he is ; 

B>it can he such a rival seem, 

For whom you heaven should disesteem? 

Ah, no ! and 'twould more honour prove 

He youi' devoto were than Love. 

Here live beloved and obeyed, 

Each one your sister, each your maid, 

And, if our rule seem strictly penned, 

The rule itself to you shall bend. 

Our Abbess, too, now far in age, 

Doth your succession near presage. 

How soft the yoke on us would lie. 

Might such fair hands as yours it tie ! 

Your voice, the sweetest of the choir, 

Shall draw heaven nearer, raise us higher, 

And your example, if our head, 

Will soon us to perfection lead. 

Those virtues to us all so dear, 

Will straight grow sanctity when here; 

And that, once sprung, increase so fast, 

Till miracles it work at last.' " 



11.] "THE HAPPY GARDEN-STATE" 39 

What reply was given by tlie heiress to these argu- 
ments, and others of a still more seductive hue, the 
poet does not tell, but turns to the eager lover who 
asks, What should he do ? He hints that a nunnery is 
no place for a virtuous maid, and that the nuns (unlike 
himself, I hope) are only thinking of her property. 
He complains that though the Court has authorised 
him to use either peace or force, the nuns still stand 
upon their guard. 

" Ill-counselled women, do you know 
Whom you resist or what you do ? " 

Using a most remarkable poetic licence, the poet refers 
to the fact that this barred-out lover is to be the pro- 
genitor of the great Lord Fairfax. 

" Is not this lie, whose offspring fierce 
Shall fight through all the universe ; 
And with successive valour try 
France, Poland, either Germany, 
Till one, as long since prophesied, 
His horse through conquered Britain ride ? " 

The lover determines to take the place by assault. It 
was not a very heroic enterprise, as Marvell describes 
it. 

" Some to the breach, against their foes, 
Their wooden Saints in vain oppose ; 
Another bolder, stands at push, 
With their old holy-water brush, 
While the disjointed Abbess threads 
The jingling chain-shot of her beads ; 
But their loud'st cannon were their lungs, 
And sharpest weapons were their tongues. 
But waving these aside like flies, 
Young Fairfax through the wall does rise- 
Then the unfrequented vault appeared. 
And superstition, vainly feared ; 



40 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

The relicks false were set to view ; 
Only the jewels there were true, 
And truly bright and holy Thwaites, 
That weeping at the altar waits. 
But the glad youth away her bears, 
And to the Nuns bequeathes her tears, 
Who guiltily their prize bemoan, 
Like gypsies who a child have stol'n." 

The poet then goes on to glorify the results of this 
union and to describe happy days spent at Nunapple- 
ton by the descendants of Isabella Thwaites. 

" At the demolishing, this seat 
To Fairfax fell, as by escheat ; 
And what both nuns and founders willed, 
'Tis likely better thus f ulfiUed. 
For if the virgin proved not thehs, 
The cloister yet remained hers ; 
Though many a nun there made her vow, 
'Twas no religious house till now. 
From that blest bed the hero came 
Whom France and Poland yet does fame ; 
Who, when retired here to peace. 
His warlike studies could not cease ; 
But laid these gardens out, in sport, 
In the just figure of a fort. 
And with five bastions it did fence. 
As aiming one for every sense. 
When in the east the morning ray 
Hangs oat the colours of the day, 
The bee through these known alleys hums, 
Beating the dian with its drums. 
Then flowers their drowsy eyelids raise. 
Their silken ensigns each displays. 
And dries its pan, yet dank with dew, 
And fills its flask with odours new. 
These as their Governor goes by 
In fragrant volleys they let fly. 



n.] «'THE HAPPY GARDEN-STATE" 

And to salute their Governess 

Again as great a charge they press : 

None for the virgin nymph ; for she 

Seems with the flowers a flower to be. 

And think so still ! though not compare 

With breath so sweet, or cheek so fair I 

Well shot, ye firemen ! Oh, how sweet 

And round your equal fires do meet, 

Wliose shrill report no ear can tell, 

But echoes to the eye and smell ! 

See how the flowers, as at parade. 

Under their colours stand displayed ; 

Each regiment in order grows, 

That of the tulip, pink and rose. 

But when the vigilant patrol 

Of stars walk round about tlie pole. 

Their leaves, which to the stalks are curled, 

Seem to their staves the ensigns furled. 

Then in some flower's beloved hut, 

Each bee, as sentinel, is shut. 

And sleeps so too, but, if once stirred, 

She runs you through, nor asks the word. 

Oh, thou, that dear and happy isle, 
The garden of the world ei-ewhile. 
Thou Paradise of the four seas, 
Which heaven planted us to please, 
But, to exclude the world, did guard 
With watery, if not flaming sword, — 
What luckless apple did we taste. 
To make us mortal, and thee waste ? 
Unhappy ! shall we never more 
That sweet militia restore. 
When gardens only had their towers 
And all the garrisons were flowers. 
When roses only arms might bear, 
And men did rosy garlands wear? 
Tulij^s, in several colours barred, 
Were then the Switzers of our guard; 



41 



42 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

The gardener had the soldier's place, 
And his more gentle forts did trace; 
The nursery of all things green 
Was then the only magazine ; 
The winter quarters were the stoves, 
Where he the tender plants removes. 
But war all this doth overgrow : 
We ordnance plant, and powder sow. 

The arching boughs unite between 

The columns of the temple green, 

And underneath tlie winged quires 

Echo about their tuned fires. 

The nightingale does here make choice 

To sing the trials of her voice ; 

Low shrubs she sits in, and adorns 

With music high the squatted thorns ; 

But highest oalvs stoop down to hear, 

And listening elders prick the ear; 

The thorn, lest it should hurt her, draws 

Within the skin its shrunken claws. 

But I have for my music found 

A sadder, yet moi-e pleasing sound ; 

The stock-doves, whose fair necks are graced 

With nuptial rings, their ensigns chaste. 

Yet always, for some cause unknown, 

Sad pair, unto the elms they moan. 

O why should such a couple mourn,' 

That in so equal flames do burn ! 

Then as I careless on the bed 

Of gelid strawberries do tread, 

And through the hazels thick espy 

The hatching throstle's shining eye, 

The heron, from the ash's top. 

The eldest of its young lets drop, 

As if it stork-like did pretend 

That tribute to its lord to send. 

Thus I, easy philosopher, 
Among the birds and trees confer ; 



II.] "THE HAPPY GARDEN-STATE" 43 

And little now to make me, wants, 

Or of the fowls, or of the plants ; 

Give me but wings as they, and I 

Straight floating on the air shall fly ; 

Or turn me but, and you shall see 

I was but an inverted tree. 

Already I begin to call 

In their most learn'd original. 

And where I language want, my signs 

The bird upon the bough divines, 

And more attentive there doth sit 

Than if she were with lime-twigs knit, 

No leaf does tremble in the wind, 

Which I returning cannot find. 

One of these scattered Sibyls' leaves 

Strange prophecies my fancy weaves, 

And in one history consumes. 

Like Mexique paintings, all the plumes j 

What Rome, Greece, Palestine e'er said, 

I in this light mosaic read. 

Thrice happy he, who, not mistook. 

Hath read in Nature's mystic book ! 

And see how chance's better wit 

Could with a mask my studies hit ! 

The oak -leaves me embroider all, 

Between which caterpillars crawl ; 

And ivy, with familiar trails, 

Me licks and clasps, and curls and hales. 

Under this Attic cope I move, 

Like some great prelate of the grove ; 

Then, languishing with ease, I toss 

On pallets swoln of velvet moss. 

While the wind, cooling through the boughs, 

Flatters with air my panting brows. 

Thanks for your rest, ye inossy banks, 

And unto you, cool zephyrs, thanks. 

Who, as my hair, my thoughts too shed, 

And winnow from the chaff my head I 



44 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

How safe, methinks, and strong behind 
These trees, have 1 encamped my mind, 
Where beauty, aiming at the heart. 
Bends in some tree its useless dart. 
And where the world no certain shot 
Can make, or me it toucheth not, 
But I on it securely play 
And gall its horsemen all the day. 
Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines 
Curl me about, ye gadding vines. 
And oh so close your circles lace, 
That I may never leave this place ! 
But, lest your fetters prove too weak, 
Ere I your silken bondage break. 
Do you, O brambles, chain me too. 
And, courteous briars, nail me through 1 

Oh what a pleasure 'tis to hedge 
My temples here with heavy sedge. 
Abandoning my lazy side, 
Stretched as a bank unto the tide, 
Or to suspend my sliding foot 
On the osier's undermined root, 
And in its branches tough to hang, 
While at my lines the fishes twang ? 
But now away, my hooks, my quills. 
And angles, idle utensils ! 
The young Maria walks to-night; 

'Tis she that to these gardens gave 
That wondrous beauty which they have ; 
She straightness on the woods bestows ; 
To her the meadow sweetness owes ; 
Nothing could make the river be 
So crystal pure, but only she, 
She yet more pure, sweet, straight, and fair 
Than gardens, woods, meads, rivers are. 

This 'tis to have been from the first 
In a domestic heaven nursed, 



II.] "THE HAPPY GARDEN-STATE" 45 

Under the discipline severe 
Of Fairfax, and the starry Verb. 
Where not one object can come nigh 
But pure, and spotless as the eye, 
And goodness doth itself entail 
On females, if there want a male." 

This poem, having a biographical value, I have 
quoted at, perhaps, too great length. Other poems 
of this garden-period of Marvell's life are better 
known. His own English version of his Latin poem 
Hortus contains lovely stanzas : — 

" How vainly men themselves amaze 
To win the palm, the oak, or bays ; 
And their uncessant labours see 
Crowned from some single herb or tree, 
Whose short and narrow-verged shade 
Does prudently their toils upbraid ; 
While all the flowers and trees do close, 
To weave the garlands of Repose ! 

Fair Quiet, have I found thee here, 
And Innocence, thy sister dear ? 
Mistaken long, I sought you then 
In busy companies of men. 
Your sacred plants, if here below, 
Only among the plants will grow; 
Society is all but rude 
To this delicious solitude. 

No white nor red was ever seen 
So amorous as this lovely green. 

What wond'rous life is this I lead ! 
Ripe apples drop about my head ; 
The luscious clusters of the vine 
Upon my mouth do crush their wine ; 
The nectarine, and curious peach. 
Into my hands themselves do reach ; 



46 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

Stumbling on melons, as I pass, 

In snared with flowers, I fall on grass. 

Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, 
Withdraws into its happiness ; — 
The mind, that ocean where each kind 
Does straight its own resemblance find ; — 
Yet it creates, transcending these, 
Far other worlds, and other seas, 
Annihilating all that's made 
To a green thought in a green shade." ^ 

Well known as are Marvell's lines to his Coy Mis- 
tress, I have not the heart to omit them, so eminently 
characteristic are they of his style and humour : — 

" Had we but world enough and time, 
This coyness, lady, were no crime. 
We would sit down and think which way 
To walk, and pass our long love's day. 
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side 
Should'st rubies find : I by the tide 
Of Humber would complain. I would 
Love you ten years before the Flood, 
And you should, if you please, refuse 
Till the conA'ersion of the Jews. 
My vegetable love should grow 
Vaster than empires and more slow. 
An hundred years should go to praise 
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze ; 
Two hundred to adoi'e each breast. 
But thirty thousand to the rest ; 
An age at least to every part, 
And the last age should show your heart. 
For, lady, you deserve this state, 
Nor would I love at lower rate. 

1 Many a reader has made his first acquaintance with Mar- 
veil ou reading these lines in the Essays of Elia {The Old Benchers 
of the Inner Temple). 



II.] "THE HAPPY GARDEN-STATE" 47 

But at my back I always hear 
Time's winged cliariot hurrying near, 
And yonder all before us lie 
Deserts of vast eternity. 
Thy beauty shall no more be found, 
Nor in thy marble vault shall sound 
My echoing song ; then worms shall try 
That long-preserved virginity, 
And your quaint honour turn to dust, 
And into ashes all my lust. 
The grave's a fine and private place, 
But none, I think, do there embrace. 

Now, tlierefore, while the youthful hue 
Sits on thy skin like morning dew. 
And while thy willing soul transpires 
At every pore with instant fires. 
Now, let us sport us while we may ; 
And now, like aniorous birds of prey. 
Rather at once our time devour. 
Than languish in his slow-chapt power ! 
Let us roll all our strength, and all 
Our sweetness up into one ball ; 
And tear our pleasures with rough strife, 
Through the iron gates of life ! 
Thus, though we cannot make our sun 
Stand still, yet we will make him run." 

Mr. Aitken's valuable edition of Marvell's poems 
and satires can now be had of all booksellers for 
two shillings,^ and with these volumes in his posses- 
sion the judicious reader will be able to supply his 
own reflections whilst life beneath the sun is still his. 
Poetry is a personal matter. The very canons of 
criticism are themselves literature. If we like the 
Ars Poetica, it is because we enjoy reading Horace. 

1 Poems and Satires of Andrew Marvell, 2 vols. Routledge, 
1905. 



CHAPTER III 

A CIVIL SEKVANT IN THE TIME OF THE 
COMMONWEALTH 

When Andrew Marvell first made John Milton's 
acquaintance is not known. They must both have 
had common friends at or belonging to Cambridge. 
Fairfax may have made the two men known to 
each other, although it is just as likely that Milton 
introduced Marvell to Fairfax. All we know is that 
when the engagement at Nunappleton House came to 
an end, Marvell, being then minded to serve the State 
in some civil capacity, applied to the Secretary for 
Foreign Tongues for what would now be called a 
testimonial, which he was fortunate enough to obtain 
in the form of a letter to the Lord- President of the 
Council, John Bradshaw. Milton seems always to 
have liked Bradshaw, who was not generally popular 
even on his own side, and in the Defensio Secunda pro 
populo Anglicano extols his character and attainments in 
sonorous latinity. Bradshaw had become in February 
1649 the first President of the new Council of State, 
which, after the disappearance of the king and the 
abolition of the House of Lords, took over the burden 
of the executive, and claimed the right to scrape men's 
consciences by administering to anybody it chose an 
oath requiring them to approve of what the House of 
Commons had done against the king, and of their 
abolition of kingly government and of the House of 

48 



in.] CIVIL SEKVANT IN THE COMMONWEALTH 49 

Peers, and that the legislative and supreme power was 
wholly in the House of Commons. 

Before the creation of this Council the duties of 
Latin Secretary to the Parliament had been discharged 
by Georg Rudolph Weckherlin, a German diplomat 
who had married an Englishwoman. He retired in 
bad health at this time, and Milton was appointed to 
his place in 1649. When, later on, the sight of the 
most illustrious of all our civil servants failed him, 
Weckherlin returned to the office as Milton's assistant. 
In December 1652 ill-health again compelled Weck- 
herlin's retirement.^ 

Milton's letter to Bradshaw, who had made his 
home at Eton, is dated February 21, 1653, and is as 
follows : — 

" My Lord, — But that it would be an interruption to the 
public wherein your studies are perpetually employed, I 
should now and then venture to supply thus my enforced 
abseuce with a line or two, though it were onely my business, 
and that would be uo slight one, to make my due acknowledg- 
ments of your many favours ; which I both do at this time 
and ever shall ; and have this farther, which I thought my 
part to let you know of, that there will be with you to-morrow 

1 In 1659 Clarendon, then Sir Edward Hyde, and in 
Brussels, writing to Sir Richard Fanshaw, says, " You are the 
secretary of the Latin tongue and I will mend the warrant 
you sent, and have it despatched as soon as I hear again from 
you, but I must tell you the place in itself, if it be not 
dignified by the person who hath some other qualification, 
is not to be valued. There is no signet belongs to it, which 
can be only kept by a Secretary of State, from whom the Latin 
Secretary always receives orders and prepares no despatches 
without his direction, and hath only a fee of a hundred pound 
a year. And therefore, except it hath been in the hands of a 
person who hath had some other employment, it hath fallen 
to the fortune of inconsiderable men as Weckerlin was the 
last" {Hist. MSS. Com., Heathcote Papers, 1899, p. 9). 

B 



50 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

uj)on some occasion of business a gentleman whose name is 
Mr. Marvile, a man whom both by report and the converse I 
have had with him of singular desert for the State to make 
use of, who also offers himself, if there be any employment for 
him. His father was the Minister of Hull, and he hath spent 
four years abroad in Holland, France, Italy, and Spain to very 
good purpose, as I believe, and the gaining of these four 
languages, besides he is a scholer and well-read in the Latin 
and Greek authors, and no doubt of an approved conversation, 
for he now comes lately out of the house of the Lord Fairfax, 
who was Generall, where he was intrusted to give some instruc- 
tions in the languages to the Lady, his daughter. If upon the 
death of Mr. Weckerlyn the Councell shall think that I shall 
need any assistance in the performance of my place (though 
for my part I find no encumbrance of that which belongs to 
me, except it be in point of attendance at Conferences with 
Ambassadors, which I must confess in my condition I am not 
fit for) it would be hard for them to find a man so fit every 
way for that purpose as this gentleman : one who, I believe, 
in a short time would be able to do them as much service as 
Mr. Ascan. This, my Lord, I write sincerely without any 
other end than to perform my duty to the publick in helping 
them to an humble servant ; laying aside those jealousies and 
that emulation which mine own condition might suggest to 
me by bringing in such a coadjutor; and remain, my Lord, 
your most obliged and faithful servant, John Milton. 

"Feb. 21, 1652 (O.S.)." 

Addressed : " For the Honourable the Lord Bradshawe." 

No handsomer testimonial than this was ever 
penned. It was unsviccessful. When Milton wrote 
to Bradshaw, Weckherlin was in fact dead, and on 
his retirement in the previous December, John 
Thurloe, the very handy Secretary of the Council, 
had for the time assumed Weckherlin's duties, and 
obtained on that score an addition to his salary. 
No actvial vacancy, therefore, occurred on Weckherlin's 



III.] CIVIL SERVANT IN THE COMMONWEALTH 51 

death. None the less, shortly afterwards, Philip 
Meadows, also a Cambridge man, was appointed 
Milton's assistant, and Marvell had to wait four years 
longer for his place. 

When Marvell's connection with Eton first began is 
not to be ascertained. His friend, John Oxenbridge, 
who had been driven from his tutorship at Magdalen 
Hall, Oxford, by Laud in 1634 to 

" Where the remote Bermudas ride," 

but had returned home, became in 1652 a Fellow of 
Eton College. Oliver St. John, who at this time was 
Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, and had 
married Oxenbridge's sister, was known to Marvell, 
and may have introduced him to his brother-in-law. 
At all events Marvell frequently visited Eton, where, 
however, he had the good sense to frequent not merely 
the cloisters, but the poor lodgings where the " ever 
memorable " John Hales, ejected from his fellowship, 
spent the last years of his life. 

" I account it no small honour to have grown up into 
some part of his acquaintance and conversed awhile with 
the living remains of one of the clearest heads and best pre- 
pared breasts in Christendom." ^ 

Hales died in 1656, and his Golden Remains were first 
published three years later. Marvell's words of pane- 
gyric are singularly well chosen. It is a curious 
commentary upon the confused times of the Civil War 
and Restoration that perhaps never before, and seldom, 
if ever, since, has England contained so many clear 
heads and well-prepared breasts as it did then. Small 
indeed is the influence of men of thought upon their 
immediate surroundings. 

1 The Rehearsal Transprosed. — Grosart, iii. 126. 



52 ANDREW MAUVELL [chap. 

The Lord Bradsliaw, we know, had a home in Eton, 
and on the occasion of one of Marvell's evidently 
frequent visits to the Oxenbridges, Milton entrusted 
him with a letter to Bradshaw and a presentation 
copy of the Secimda defensio. Marvell delivered both 
letter and book, and seems at once to have informed 
the distinguished author that he had done so. But 
alas for the vanity of the writing man ! The sublime 
poet, who in his early manhood had composed Lycidas, 
and was in his old age to write Paradise Lost, demanded 
further and better particulars as to the precise manner 
in which the chief of his ofl&ce received, not only the 
book, but the letter which accompanied it. Nobody is 
now left to think much of Bradshaw, but in 1654 he 
was an excellent representative of the class Carlyle was 
fond of describing as the alors cel^bre. Prompted by 
this desire, Milton must have written to Marvell 
hinting, as he well knew how to do, his surprise at the 
curtness of his friend's former communication, and 
Marvell's reply to this letter has come down to us. It 
is Marvell's glory that long before Paradise Lost he 
recognised the essential greatness of the blind secre- 
tary, and his letter is a fine example of the mode of 
humouring a great man. Be it remembered, as we 
read, that this letter was not addressed to one of the 
greatest names in literature, but to a petulant and 
often peevish scholar, living of necessity in great 
retirement, whose name is never once mentioned by 
Clarendon, and about whom the voluminous Thurloe, 
who must have seen him hundreds of times, has nothing 
to say except that he was '' a blind man who wrote 
Latin letters." Odder still, perhaps, Richard Baxter, 
whose history of his own life and times is one of 
the most informing books in the world, never so 
much as mentions the one and only man whose name 



III.] CIVIL SERVANT IN THE COMMONWEALTH 53 

can, without any violent sense of unfitness, be given 
to the age about which Baxter was writing so 
laboriously. 



"Honoured Sir, — I did not satisfie my self in the account 
I gave you of presentinge your Book to my Lord, although it 
seemed to me that I writ to you all which the messenger's 
speedy returne the same night from Eaton would permit me ; 
and I perceive that, by reason of that hast, I did not give you 
satisfaction neither concern inge the delivery of your Letter at 
the same time. Be pleased therefore to pardon me and know 
that I tendered theiii both together. But my Lord read not 
the Letter while I was with him, which I attributed to our 
despatch, and some other businesse tendinge thereto, which I 
therefore wished ill to, so farr as it hindred an affaire much 
better and of greater importance, I mean that of reading 
your Letter. And to tell you truly mine own imagination, I 
thought that he would not open it while I was there, because 
he might suspect that I, delivering it just upon my departure, 
might have brought in it some second proposition like to that 
which you had before made to him by your Letter to my 
advantage. However, I assure mj^self that he has since read 
it, and you, tliat he did then witnesse all respecte to your 
person, and as much satisfaction concerninge your work as 
could be expected from so cursory a review and so sudden 
an account as he could then have of it from me. Mr. Oxen- 
bridge, at his returne from Loudon, will, I know, give you 
thanks for his book, as I do with all acknowledgement and 
humility for that you have sent me. I shall now studie it 
even to the getting of it by heart ; esteeming it, according to 
my poore judgment (which yet I wish it were so right in all 
things else), as the most compendious scale for so much to 
the height of the Roman Eloquence, when I consider how 
equally it turnes and rises with so many figures it seems to 
me a Trajan's columne, in whose winding ascent we see 
imboss'd the severall monuments of your learned victoryes : 
And Salmatius and Morus make up as great a triumph as 
that of Decebalus, whom too, for ought I know, you shall 
have forced, as Trajan the other, to make themselves away 



54 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

out of a just desperatiou. I have au affectionate curiousity 
to know what becomes of Colouell Overton's businesse. And 
am exceeding glad that Mr. Skynner is got near you, the 
happinesse which I at the same time congratulate to him and 
envie, there being none who doth, if I may so say, more 
jealously honour you then, Honoured Sir, Your most 
affectionate humble servant, Andrew Marvell. 

" Eaton, June 2, 1654." 
Addressed : " For my most honoured friend, 

" John Milton, Esquire, Secretarye 
" for the Forrain affaires 

" at his house in Petty France, 
" Westminster." 

To conclude Marvell's Eton experiences ; in 1657, 
and very shortly before his obtaining his appointment 
as Milton's assistant in the place of Philip Meadows, 
who was sent on a mission to Lisbon, Marvell was 
chosen by the Lord-Protector to be tutor at Eton to 
Cromwell's ward, Mr. Dutton, and took up his resi- 
dence with his pupil with the Oxenbridges. The 
following letter, addressed by Marvell to Oliver, will 
be read with interest : — 

" May it please your Excellence, — It might, perhaps, seem 
fit for me to seek out words to give your Excellence thanks 
for myself. But, indeed, the only civility which it is proper 
for me to practice with so eminent a person is to obey you, 
and to perform honestly the M'ork that you have set me 
about. Therefore I shall use the time that your Lordship is 
pleased to allow me for writing, onely for that purpose for 
which you have given me it ; that is, to render you au 
account of Mr. Dutton. I have taken care to examine him 
several times in the presence of Mr. Oxenbridge, as those 
who weigh and tell over money before some witnesse ere 
they take charge of it ; for I thought that there might be 
possibly some lightness in the coyn, or errour in the telling, 
which hereafter I should be bound to make good. Therefore, 
Mr. Oxenbridge is the best to make your Excellency au im- 



III.] CIVIL SERVANT IN THE COMMONWEALTH 55 

partial relation thereof : I shall only say, that I shall strive 
according to my best understanding (that is, according to 
those rules your Lordship hath given me) to increase whatso- 
ever talent he may have already. Truly, he is of gentle and 
waxen disposition ; and God be praised, I cannot say he hath 
brought with him any evil impression ; and I shall hope to 
set nothing into his spirit but what may be of a good 
sculpture. He hath in him two things that make youth 
most easy to be managed, — modesty, which is the bridle to 
vice; and emulation, which is the spur to virtue. And the 
care which your Excellence is pleased to take of him is no 
small encouragement and shall be so represented to him; 
but, above all, I shall labour to make him sensible of his duty 
to God ; for then we begin to serve faithfully, when we con- 
sider He is our master. And in this, both he and I owe 
infinitely to your Lordshij), for having placed us in so godly 
a family as that of Mr. Oxenbridge, whose doctrine and 
example are like a book and a map, not only instructing the 
ear, but demonstrating to the eye, which way we ought to 
travell; and Mrs. Oxenbridge has looked so well to him, 
that he hath already much mended his complexion ; and now 
she is ordering his chamber, that he may delight to be in it 
as often as his studys require. For the rest, most of this 
time hath been spent in acquainting ourselves with him ; and 
truly he is chearfull, and I hope thinks us to be good com- 
pany. I shall, upon occasion, henceforward inform your 
Excellence of any particularities in our little affairs, for so I 
esteem it to be my duty. I have no more at present, but to 
give thanks to God for your Lordship, and to beg grace of 
Him, that I may approve myself, Your Excellency's most 
humble and faithful servant, Andrew Marvell. 

" Windsor, July 28, 1653. 

" Mr. Button i presents his most humble service to your 
Excellence." 

Something must now be said of Marvell's literary- 
productions during this period, 1652-1657. It was in 

1 Even Mr. Firth can tell me nothing about this Ward of 
Cromwell's. 



56 ANDEEW MARVELL [chap. 

1653 that lie began his stormy career as an anonymous 
political poet and satirist. The Dutch were his first 
victims, good Protestants though they were. Marvell 
never liked the Dutch, and had he lived to see the 
Revolution must have undergone some qualms. 

In 1652 the Commonwealth was at war with the 
United Provinces. Trade jealousy made the war 
what politicians call "inevitable." This jealousy of 
the Dutch dates back to Elizabeth, and to the first 
stirring in the womb of time of the British navy. 
This may be readily perceived if we read Dr. John 
Dee's "Petty Navy Poyal," 1577, and "A Politic 
Plat (plan) for the Honour of the Prince," 1580, 
and, somewhat later in date, "England's Way to 
Win Wealth," 1614.^ 

These short tracts make two things quite plain — 
first, the desire to get our share of the foreign fishing 
trade, then wholly in the hands of the Dutch ; and 
second, the recognition that England was a sea-empire, 
dependent for its existence upon a great navy manned 
by the seafaring inhabitants of our coasts. 

The enormous fishing trade done in our own waters 
by the Dutch, the splendid fleet of fishing craft with 
twenty thousand handy sailors on board, ready by 
every 1st of June to sail out of the Maas, the Texel, 
and the Vlie, to catch herring in the North Sea, excited 
admiration, envy, and almost despair. 

" O, slothful England and careless countrymen ! look but 
on these fellows that we call the pluinp Hollanders ! Behold 
their diligence in fishing and our most careless negligence! 
Six hundred of these fisherships and more be great Busses, 
some six score tons, most of them be a hundred tons, and the 
rest three score tons and fifty tons; the biggest of them 

1 For reprints of these tracts, see Social England Illustrated, 
Constable and Co., 1903. 



III.] CIVIL SERVANT IN THE COMMONWEALTH 57 

having four and twenty men, some twenty men, and some 
eighteen or sixteen men apiece. So there cannot be in this 
fleetof People no less than twenty thousand sailors. . . . No 
king upon the earth did ever see such a fleet of his own sub- 
jects at any time, and yet this fleet is there and then yearly 
to be seen. A most worthy sight it were, if they were my 
own countrymen, yet have I taken pleasure in being amongst 
them, to behold the neatness of their ships and fishermen, how 
every man knoweth his own place, and all labouring merrily 
together.^ 

" Now, in our sum of fishermen, let us see what vent have 
we for our fish in other countries, and what commodities and 
corn is brought into this Kingdom? And what ships are set 
in work by them whereby mariners are best employed. Not 
one. It is pitiful ! . . . This last year at Yarmouth there were 
three hundred idle men that could get nothing to do, living 
very poor for lack of employment, which most gladly would 
have gone to sea in Pinks if there had been any for them 
to go in. . . . And this last year the Hollanders did lade 
12 sail of Holland ships with red herrings at Yarmouth for 
CivitaYecchia, Leghorn and Genoa and Marseilles and Toulon. 
Most of these being laden by the English merchants. So that 
if this be suffered the English owners of ships shall have but 
small employment for them." ^ 

Nor was the other aspect of the case lost sight of. 
How can a great navy necessary for our sea-empire 
be manned otherwise than by a race of brave sea- 
faring men, accustomed from their infancy to handle 
boats ? 

"Fourthly, how many thousands of soldiers of all degrees 
would be by these means not only hardened well to brook 
all rage and disturbance of sea, but also would be well 
practised and trained to great perfection of understanding 
all manner of fight and service of sea, so that in time of great 

1 " England's Way to Win Wealth." See Social England Illus- 
trated, p. 253. 

2 Ibid. p. 265. 



68 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

need that expert and hardy crew of some thousands of sea- 
soldiers would be to this realm a treasure incomparable.^ 

"We see the Hollanders being well fed in fishing affairs 
and stronger and lustier than the sailors who use the long 
Southern voyages, but these courageous, young, lusty, strong- 
fed younkers tluit shall be bred in the Basses, when His 
Majesty shall have occasion for their service in war against 
the enemy, will be fellows for the nonce ! and will put more 
strength to an iron crow at a piece of great ordnance in 
training of a cannon, or culvining with the direction of the 
experimented master Gunner, then two or three of the fore- 
named surfeited sailors. And in distress of wind-grown sea 
and foul winter's weather, for flying forward to their labour, 
for pulling in a top-sail or a sprit-sail, or shaking off a bonnet 
in a dark night! for wet or cold cannot make them shrink 
nor stain, that the North Seas and the Busses and Pinks liave 
dyed in the grain for such purposes." ^ 

The years, as tliey \vent by, only served to increase 
English jealousy of the Dutch, Avlio not only fished 
our water but did the carrying trade of the world. 
It was no rare sight to see Yarmouth full of Dutch 
bottoms, and Dutch sailors loading them with English 
goods. * 

In the early days of the Commonwealth the painful- 
ness of the situation was accentuated by the fact that 
some of our colonies or plantations, as they Avere then 
called — Virginia and the Barbadoes, for example — 
stuck to the king and gave a commercial preference to 
the Dutch, shipping their produce to all parts of the 
w^orld exclusively in Dutch bottoms. This was found in- 
tolerable, and in October 1651 the Long Parliament, Hear- 
ing its violent end, passed the first Navigation Act, of 

1 Dr. Dee's " Petty Navy Royal." Social England Illus- 
t7-aterl, p. 46. 

2 "England's Way to Win Wealth." Social England Illus- 
trated, p. 268. 



III.] CIVIL SERVANT IN THE COMMONWEALTH 69 

which Eanke says : " Of all the acts ever passed in 
Parliament, it is perhaps the one which brought 
about the most important results for England and 
the world." ^ 

The Navigation Act provided " that all goods from 
countries beyond Europe should be imported into 
England in English ships only; and all European 
goods either in English ships or in ships belonging 
to the countries from which these articles originally 
came." 

This was a challenge indeed. 

Another perpetual source of irritation was the Right 
of Search, that is, the right of stopping neutral ships 
and searching their cargoes for contraband. England 
asserted this right as against the Dutch, who, as the 
world's carriers, were most subject to the right, and 
not unnaturally denied its existence. 

War was declared in 1652, and made the fame 
of two great admirals, Blake and Van Tromp. 
Oliver's spirit was felt on the seas, and before many 
months were over England had captured more than 
a thousand Dutch trading vessels, and brought 
business to a standstill in Amsterdam — then the 
great centre of commercial interests. When six 
short years afterwards the news of Cromwell's death 
reached that city, its inhabitants greatly rejoiced, 
crowding the streets and crying "the Devil is 
dead." 

Andrew Marvell was impregnated with the new 
ideas about sea-power. A great reader and converser 
with the best intellects of his time, and a Hull man, 
he had probably early grasped the significance of 
Bacon's illuminating saying in the famous essay on 

^ 'R&nk.e' s History of England during the Seventeenth Century, 
vol. iii. p. (J8. 



60 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

the True Greatness of Kingdoms and ^s^aies (first printed 
in 1612), " that he that commands the sea is at great 
liberty and may take as much and as little of the war 
as he will." Cromwell, though not the creator of our 
navy, was its strongest inspiration until Nelson, and 
no feature of his great administration so excited 
Marvell's patriotic admiration as the Lord-Protector's 
sleepless energy in securing and maintaining the 
command of the sea. 

In Marvell's poem, first published as a broadsheet in 
1655, entitled The First Anniversary of the Government 
under His Highness the Lord-Protector, he describes 
foreign princes soundly rating their ambassadors for 
having misinformed them as to the energies of the 
new Commonwealth : — 

" * Is this,' saith one, ' the nation that we read 
Spent with both wars, under a Captain dead 1 
Yet rig a navy while we dress us late 
And ere we dine rase and rebuild a state ? 
What oaken forests, and what golden mines, 
What mints of men — what union of designs 1 

Needs must we all their tributaries be 
Whose navies hold tlie sluices of the sea ! 
The ocean is the fountain of command, 
But that once took, we captives are on land ; 
And those that have the waters for their share 
Can quickly leave us neither earth nor air.' " 

Marvell's aversion to the Dutch was first displayed 
in the rough lines called The Character of Holland, 
published in 1653 during the first Dutch War. As 
poetry the lines have no great merit ; they do not 
even jingle agreeably — but they are full of the spirit 
of the time, and breathe forth that " envy, hatred, 
malice, and all uncharitableness " which are apt to 



III.] CIVIL SERVANT IN THE COMMONWEALTH 61 

be sucli large ingredients in the compound we call 
"patriotism." They begin thus: — 

" Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land, 
As but the off-scoiiring of the British sand, 
And so nnich earth as was contributed 
By English pilots wlien they heaved the lead, 
Or what by the ocean's slow alluvion feel 
Of shipwrecked cockle and the muscle -shell, — 
This indigested vomit of the sea 
Fell to the Dutch by just propriety." 

The gallant struggle to secure their country from 
the sea is made the subject of curious banter : — 

" How did they rivet with gigantic piles. 
Thorough the centre their new-catched miles, 
And to the stake a struggling country bound, 
Where barking waves still bait the forced ground. 
Building their watery Babel far more high. 
To reach the sea, than those to scale the sky ! 
Yet still his claim the injured ocean laid. 
And oft at leap-frog o'er their steeples played, 
As if on purpose it on land had come 
To show them what 's their mare Uherum. 
A daily deluge over them does boil ; 
The earth and water play at level coil. 
The fish ofttimes the burgher dispossessed, 
And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest." 

This final conceit greatly tickled the fancy of Charles 
Lamb, who was perhaps the first of the moderns to 
rediscover both the rare merits and the curiosities 
of our author. Hazlitt thought poorly of the jest.^ 
Marvell proceeds with his ridicule to attack the 
magistrates : — 

" For, as with pygmies, who best kills the crane ; 
Among the hungry, he that treasures grain ; 
Among the blind, the one-eyed blinkard reigns ; 
So rules among the drowned, he that drains : 

1 See Leigh Hunt's Wit and Humour (1846), pp. 38, 237. 



62 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

Not who first see the rising sun, commands, 
But who could first discern the rising lands ; 
Who best could know to pump an earth so leak. 
Him they their Lord, and Country's Father, speak ; 
To make a bank, was a great plot of state ; 
Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate." ^ 

When the war-fever was raging such humour as this 
may well have passed muster with the crowd. 

The incident — there is always an "incident" — 
which served as the actual excuse for hostilities, is 
referred to as follows : — 

" Let this one courtesy witness all the rest, 
When their whole navy they together pressed, 
Not Christian captives to redeem from bands, 
Or intercept the western golden sands. 
No, but all ancient rights and leagues must fail, 
Rather than to the English strike their sail ; 
To whom their weather-beaten province owes 
Itself." 



I Butler's lines, A Descriptmi of Holland, are very like 
Marvell's : — 



" A Country that draws fifty foot of water 
In which men live as in a hold of nature. 



They dwell in ships, like swarms of rats, and prey 
Upon the goods all nations' fleets convey ; 



That feed like cannibals on other fishes, 
And serve their 'cousin-germans up in dishes : 
A land that rides at anchor and is moor'd, 
In which they do not live but go aboard." 

Marvell and Butler were rival wits, but Holland was a common 
butt ; so powerful a motive is trade jealousy. 



III.] CIVIL SERVANT IN THE COMMONWEALTH 63 

Two spirited lines describe the discomfiture of Van 
Tromp : — 

" And the torn navy staggered with him home 
While the sea laughed itself into a foam." 

This first Dutch War came to an end in 1654, when 
Holland was compelled to acknowledge the supremacy 
of the English flag in the home waters, and to acquiesce 
in the Navigation Act. It is a curious commentary 
upon the black darkness that conceals the future, that 
Cromwell, dreading as he did the House of Orange 
and the youthful grandson of Charles the First, who 
at the appointed hour was destined to deal the House 
of Stuart a far deadlier stroke than Cromwell had 
been able to do, either on the field of battle or in front 
of Whitehall, refused to ratify the Treaty of Peace 
with the Dutch until John De Witt had obtained an 
Act excluding the Prince of Orange from ever filling 
the office of Stadtholder of the Province of Holland. 

The contrast between the glory of Oliver's Dutch 
War and the shame of Charles the Second's sank deep 
into Marvell's heart, and lent bitterness to many of his 
later satirical lines. 

Marvell's famous Horatian Ode upon CromvjelVs 
Return from Ireland in 1650 has a curious biblio- 
graphical interest. So far as we can tell, it was first 
published in 1776. When it was composed we do 
not know. At Nunappleton House Oliver was not a 
X>ersona grata in 1650, for he had no sooner come back 
from Ireland than he had stepped into the shoes of the 
Lord-General Fairfax; and there were those. Lady 
Fairfax, I doubt not, among the number, who believed 
that the new Lord-General thought it was high time 
he should be where Fairfax's " scruple " at last put 
him. We may be sure Cromwell's character was dis- 



64 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

sected even more than it was extolled at ISTunappIeton. 
The famous Ode is by no means a panegyric, and its 
true hero is the ''Royal actor," whom Cromwell, so 
the poem suggests, lured to his doom. It is not likely 
that the Ode was composed after Marvell had left 
Nunappleton, though it may have been so before he 
went there. There is an old untraceable tradition 
that Marvell was among the crowd that saw the king 
die. What deaths have been witnessed, and with what 
strange apparent apathy, by the London crowd ! But 
for this tradition one's imagination Avould trace to 
Lady Fairfax the most famous of the stanzas. 

But to return to the history of the Ode. In 1776 
Captain Edward Thompson, a connection of the 
Marvell family and a versatile sailor with a passion 
for print, which had taken some odd forms of expres- 
sion, produced by subscription in three quarto volumes 
the first collected edition of Andrew Marvell's works, 
both verse and prose. Such an edition had been long 
premeditated by Thomas Hollis, one of the best friends 
literature had in the eighteenth century. It was 
Hollis who gave to Sidney Sussex College the finest 
portrait in existence of Oliver Cromwell. Hollis col- 
lected material for an edition of Marvell with the aid 
of Eichard Barron, an early editor of Milton's prose 
works, and of Algernon Sidney's Discourse concerning 
Government. Barron, however, lost zeal as the task 
proceeded, and complained justly enough "of a want 
of anecdotes," and as the printer, the Avell-known and 
accomplished Bowyer, doubted the wisdom of the 
undertaking, it was allowed to drop. Barron died in 
1766, and Hollis in 1771, but the collections made by the 
latter passed into the hands of Captain Thompson, who, 
with the assistance of Mr. Robert Nettleton, a grand- 
son of one of Marvell's sisters, at once began to get 



III.] CIVIL SERVANT IN THE COMMONWEALTH 65 

his edition ready. On iSTettleton's death his " Marvell" 
papers came into Thompson's hands, and among them 
was, to quote the captain's own words, " a volume of 
Mr. Mar veil's poems, some written with his own hand 
and the rest copied by his order." 

The Horatian Ode was in this volume, and was 
printed from it in Thompson's edition of 1776. 

What has become of this manuscript book ? It has 
disappeared — destroyed, so we are led to believe, in a 
fit of temper by the angry and uncritical sea-captain. 

This precious volume undoubtedly contained some 
poems by Marvell, and as his handwriting was both 
well known from many examples, and is highly charac- 
teristic, we may also be certain that the captain was 
not mistaken in his assertion that some of these poems 
were in Marvell's own handwriting. But, as ill-luck 
would have it, the vohuiie also contained poems written 
at a later period and in quite another hand. Among 
these latter pieces were Addison's verses. The Spacious 
Firmament on IJigJiund When all thy Mercies, my God ; 
Dr. Watts' paraphrase When Israel freed from Pharaoh's 
Hand ; and Mallet's ballad William and Margaret. The 
two Addison pieces and the W^atts paraphrase appeared 
for the first time in the Spectator, Nos. 453, 465, and 
461, in 1712, and Mallet's ballad was first printed in 
1724. 

Still there these pieces were, in manuscript, in this 
volume, and as there were circumstances of mystifica- 
tion attendant upon their prior publication, what does 
the captain do but claim them all, Songs of Zion and 
sentimental ballad alike, as Marvell's. This of course 
brought the critics, ever anxious to air their erudition, 
down upon his head, raised his anger, and occasioned 
the destruction of the book. 

Mr. Grosart says that Captain Thompson states that 



66 ANDEEW MARVELL [chap. 

the Horatian Ode was in Marvell's handwriting. I 
cannot discover where this statement is made, though 
it is made of other poems in the volume, also published 
for the first time by the captain. 

All, therefore, we know is that the Ode was first 
published in 1776 by an editor who says he found it 
copied in a book, subsequently destroyed, which con- 
tained (among other things) some poems written in 
Marvell's handwriting, and that this book was given 
to the editor by a grand-nephew of the poet. 

Yet I imagine, poor as this evidence may seem to 
be, no student of Marvell's life and character (so far 
as his life reveals his character), and of his verse (so 
much of it as is positively known), wants more evi- 
dence to satisfy him that the Horatian Ode is as surely 
Marvell's as the lines upon Appleton House, the Ber- 
mudas, To his Coy 3Iistress, and The Garden. 

The great popularity of this Ode undoubtedly rests 
on the three stanzas : — 

" That thence the royal actor borne, 
The tragic scaffold might adorn, 
While round the armed bands ; 
Did clap theii- bloody hands : 

He nothing common did, or mean, 
Upon that memorable scene, 

But with his keener eye 

The axe's edge did try ; 

Nor called the gods with vulgar spite 
To vindicate his helpless right, 

But bowed his comely head 

Down, as upon a bed." 

It is strange that the death of the king should be 
so nobly sung in an Ode bearing Cromwell's name and 
dedicate to his genius : — 



III.] CIVIL SERVANT IN THE COMMONWEALTH 67 

" So restless Cromwell could not cease 
In the inglorious arts of peace, 
But through adventurous war 
Urged his active star ; 

Then burning through the air he went, 
And palaces and temples rent ; 

And Caesar's head at last 

Did through his laurels blast. 

'Tis madness to resist or blame 
The force of angry Heaven's flame ; 

And if we would speak true, 

Much to the man is due, 

Who, from his private gardens, where 
He lived reserved and austere, 

(As if his highest plot 

To plant the bergamot). 

Could by industrious valour climb 
To ruin the great work of time. 

And cast the kingdoms old 

Into another mould." 

The last stanzas of all have much pith and meaning in 
them : — 

" But thou, the war's and fortune's son, 
March indefatigably on ! 
And for the last effect, 
Still keep the sword erect. 

Besides the force it has to fright 
The spirits of the shady night. 

The same arts that did gain 

A power, must it maintain." ^ 

1 " To one unacquainted with Horace, this Ode, not perhaps 
so perfect as his are in form, and with occasional obscurities of 
expression which Horace would not have left, will give a truer 
notion of the kind of greatness which he achieved than could, 
so far as I know, be obtained from any other poem in our lan- 
guage." — Dean Trench. 



68 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

It is not surprising that this Ode was not published 
in 1650 — if indeed it was the work of that, and not of 
a later year. There is nothing either of the courtier 
or of the partisan about its stately versification and 
sober, solemn thought. Entire self-possession, dignity, 
criticism of a great man and a strange career by one 
well entitled to criticise, are among the chief charac- 
teristics of this noble poem. It is infinitely refreshing, 
when reading and thinking about Cromwell, to get as 
far away as possible from the fanatic's scream and the 
fury of the bigot, whether of the school of Laud or 
Hobbes. Andrew Marvell knew Oliver Cromwell alive, 
and gazed on his features as he lay dead — he knew his 
ambition, his greatness, his power, and where that 
power lay. How much might we unwittingly have 
lost, if Captain Thompson had not printed a poem 
which for more than a century of years had remained 
unknown, and exposed to all the risks of a single 
manuscript copy ! 

When Cromwell sent his picture to Queen Christina 
of Sweden to commemorate the peace he concluded 
with her in 1654, Marvell, though not then attached 
to the public service, was employed to write the Latin 
couplet that accompanied the picture. He discharged 
his task as follows : — 

In effigiem Oliveri Cromivell. 

" Hsec est quae toties inimicos umbra fugavit 
At sub qua cives otia lenta terunt." 

The authorship of these Ijnes is often attributed 
to Milton, but there is little dovibt they are of Mar- 
veil's composition. They might easily have been 
better. 

Marvell became Milton's assistant in September 
1657, and the friendship between the two men was 



III.] CIVIL SERVANT IN THE COMMONWEALTH G9 

thus consolidated by the strong ties of a common duty. 
Milton's blindness making him unfit to attend the 
reception of foreign embassies, Marvell took his place 
and joined in respectfully greeting the Dutch ambas- 
sadors. After all he was but a junior clerk, still he 
doubtless rejoiced that his lines on Holland had been 
published anonymously. Literature was strongly re- 
presented in this department of State just then, for 
Cromwell's Chamberlain, Sir Gilbert Pickering, who 
represented Northamptonshire in Parliament, had 
taken occasion to introduce his nephew, John Dryden, 
to the public service, and he was attached to the same 
office as Andrew Marvell. Poets, like pigeons, have 
often taken shelter under our public roofs, but Milton, 
Marvell, and Dryden, all at the same time, form a 
remarkable constellation. Old Noll, we may be sure, 
had nothing to do with it. Marvell must have known 
Cromwell personally ; but there is nothing to show 
that Milton and Cromwell ever met. The popular 
engraving which represents a theatrical Lord-Protector 
dictating despatches to a meek Milton is highly ludi- 
crous. Cromwell could have as easily dictated a book 
of Paradise Lost, on the composition of which Milton 
began to be engaged during the last year of the Pro- 
tectorate, as one of Milton's despatches. 

In April 1657 Admiral Blake, the first great name 
in the annals of our navy, performed his last feat of 
arms by destroyiug the Spanish West Indian fleet at 
Santa Cruz without the loss of an English vessel. The 
gallant sailor died of fever on his way home, and was 
buried according to his deserts in the Abbey. His 
body, with that of his master, was by a vote of Parlia- 
ment, December 4, 1660, taken from the grave and 
drawn to the gallows-tree, and there hanged and buried 
under it. Pepys, who was to know something of 



70 ANDREW MAEVELL [chap. 

naval administration under the second Charles, has his 
reflections on this unpleasing incident. 

Marvell's lines on Blake's victory over the Spaniards 
are not worthy of so glorious an occasion, but our 
great doings by land and sea have seldom been suitably 
recorded in verse. Drayton's Song of Agincourt is 
imperishable, but was composed nearly two centuries 
after the battle. The wail of Flodden Field still floats 
over the Border ; but Miss Elliot's famous ballad was 
published in 1765. Even the Spanish Armada had to 
wait for Macaulay's spirited fragment. Mr. Addison's 
Blenheim stirred no man's blood ; no poet sang 
Chatham's victories.^ Campbell at a later day did 
better. We must be content with what we get. 

Marvell's poem contains some vigorous lines, which 
show he was a good hater : — 

" Now doei5 Spain's fleet her spacious wings iinfold, 
Leaves the new world, and hastens for the old; 
But thoiigh the wind was fair, they slowly swum, 
Freighted with acted guilt, and guilt to come ; 
For this rich load, of which so proud they are, 
Was raised by tyranny, and raised for war. 



For now upon the main themselves they saw 
That boundless empire, where you give the law." 

The Canary Islands are rapturously described — 
their delightful climate and their excellent wine. 
Obviously they should be annexed : — 

" The best of lands should have the best of Kings." 

1 " lu the last war, when France was disgraced and overpowered 
in every quarter of the globe, when Spain coming to her assistance 
only shared her calamities, and the name of an Englishman was 
reverenced through Europe, no poet was heard amidst the general 
acclamation ; the fame of our counsellors and heroes was entrusted 
to the gazetteer." — Dr. Johnson's Life of Prior. 



III.] CIVIL SERVANT IN THE COMMONWEALTH 71 

The fight begins. "Bold Stayner leads" and 
"War turned the temperate to the torrid zone": — 

" Fate these two fleets, between both worlds, had brought 
Wlio fight, as if for both those worlds they fought. 



The all-seeing sun ne'er gazed on such a sight, 
Two dreadful navies there at anchor fight. 
And neither have, or power, or will, to fly; 
There one must conquer, or there both must die." 

Blake sinks the Spanish ships : — 

" Their galleons sunk, theii- w^ealth the sea does fiU, 
The only place where it can cause no ill " ; 

and the poet concludes : — 

" Ah ! would those treasures which both Indias have 
Were buried in as large, and deep a grave ! 
War's chief support with them would buried be, 
And the land owe her peace unto the sea. 
Ages to come your conquering arms will bless. 
There they destroyed what had destroyed their peace ; 
And in one war the present age may boast, 
The certain seeds of many wars are lost." 

Good politics, if but second-rate poetry. This was the 
last time the Spanish war-cry /Santiago, y cierra Espana 
rang in hostility in English ears. 

Turning for a moment from war to love, on the 
19th of November 1657 Cromwell's third daughter, 
the Lady Mary Cromwell, was married to Viscount, 
afterwards Earl, Fauconberg. The Fauconbergs took 
revolutions calmly and, despite the disinterment of 
their great relative, accepted the Restoration gladly 
and lived to chuckle over the Revolution. The forget- 
fulness, no less than the vindictiveness, of men is often 
surprising. Marvell, who played the part of Laureate 
during the Protectorate, produced two songs for the 



72 



ANDREW MAKVELL 



[chap. 



conventionally joyful occasion. The second of tlie 
two is decidedly pretty for a November wedding: — 

" Hobhinol. Phillis, Tomalin, away ! 
Never such a merry day, 
For the northern shepherd's son 
Has Menalcas' daughter won. 

Phillis. Stay till I some flowers have tied 
In a garland for the bride. 

Tomalin. If thou would'st a garland bring, 

Phillis, you may wait the spring : 
They have chosen such an hour 
When she is the only flower. 

Phillis. Let 's not then, at least, be seen 
Without each a sprig of green. 

Hobbinol. Fear not ; at Menalcas' hall 
There are bays enough for all. 
He, when young as we, did graze, 
But when old he planted bays. 

Tomalin. Here she comes ; but with a look 
Far more catching than my hook ; 
'T was those eyes, I now dare swear, 
Led our lambs we knew not where. 

Hobhinol. Not our lambs' own fleeces are 
Curled so lovely as her hair, , 
Nor our sheep new-washed can be 
Half so white or sweet as she. 

Phillis. He so looks as fit to keep 

Somewhat else than silly sheep. 

Hobbinol. Come, let 's in some carol new 
Pay to love and them their due. 

All. Joy to that happy pair 

Whose hopes united banish our despair. 

What shepherd could for love pretend, 

Whilst all the nymphs on Damon's choice attend? 



in.] CIVIL SERVANT IN THE COMMONWEALTH 73 

VThat shepherdess couhi hope to wed 
Before jMarina's turn were sped? 
Now lesser beauties may take place 
And meaner virtues come in play ; 

While they 
Looking from high 

Shall grace 
Our flocks and us with a propitious eye." 

All this merriment came to an end on the 3rd of 
September 1658, when Oliver Cromwell died on the 
anniversary of Dunbar fight and of the field of Wor- 
cester. And yet the end, though it was to be sudden, 
did not at once seem likely to be so. There was time 
for the poets to tune their lyres. Waller, Dryden, 
Sprat, and Marvell had no doubt that " Tumbledown 
Dick " was to sit on the throne of his father and '' still 
keep the sword erect," and were ready with their verses. 

Westminster Abbey has never witnessed a statelier, 
costlier funeral than that of " the late man who made 
himself to be called Protector," to quote words from 
one of the most impressive passages in English prose, 
the opening sentences of Cowley's Discourse by way of 
Visio7i concerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell. 
The representatives of kings, potentates, and powers 
crowded the aisles, and all was done that pomp and 
ceremony could do. Marvell, arrayed in the six yards 
of mourning the Council had voted him on the 7th of 
September, was, we may be sure, in the Abbey, and it 
may well be that his blind colleague, to whom the 
same liberal allowance had been made, leant on his 
arm during the service. Milton's muse remained 
silent. The vote of the House of Commons ordering 
the undoing of this great ceremony was little more 
than two years ahead. caeca mens homimim I 

Among the poems first printed by Captain Thomp- 



74 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. hi. 

son from the old manuscript book was one which 
was written therein in Marvell's own hand entitled 
" A poem upon the Death of his late Highness the 
Protector." Its composition was evidently not long 
delayed : — 

"We find already what those omens mean, 
Earth ne'er more glad nor Heaven more serene. 
Cease now our griefs, cahn peace succeeds a war, 
Rainbows to storms, Riciiard to Oliver." 

The lines best worth remembering in the poem are the 
following : — 

"I saw him dead : a leaden slumber lies, 
And mortal sleep over those wakeful eyes ; 
Those gentle rays under the lids were fled, 
Wliich through his looks that piercing sweetness shed ; 
That j)ort, which so majestic was and strong. 
Loose, and deprived of vigour, stretched along; 
All withered, all discoloured, pale and wan. 
How much another thing, no more that man ! 
O, human glory vain ! O, Death ! O, wings ! 
O, worthless world ! O, transitory things ! 
Yet dwelt that greatness in his shape decayed. 
That still though dead, greater than Death he laid, 
And in his altered face you something feign 
That threatens Death, he yet will live again." 



CHAPTEE IV 

IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 

Cromwell's death was an epoch in Marvell's history. 
Up to that date he had, since he left the University, 
led the life of a scholar, with a turn for business, and was 
known to many as an agreeable companion and a lively 
wit. He was keenly interested in public affairs, and 
personally acquainted with some men in great place, 
and for a year before Cromwell's death he had been in a 
branch of the Civil Service ; but of the wear and tear, 
the strife and contention, of what are called " practical 
politics " he knew nothing from personal experience. 

Within a year of the Protector's death all this was 
changed and, for the rest of his days, with but the 
shortest of occasional intervals, Andrew Marvell led the 
life of an active, eager member of Parliament, know- 
ing all that was going on in the Chamber and hearing 
of everything that was alleged to be going on in the 
Court ; busily occupied with the affairs of his con- 
stituents in Hull, and daily watching, with an increas- 
ingly heavy heart and a bitter humour, the corruption 
of the times, the declension of our sea-power, the 
growing shame of England, and what he believed to 
be a dangerous conspiracy afoot for the undoing of the 
Eeformation and the destruction of the Constitution 
in both Church and State. 

" Garden-poetry " could not be reared on such a soil 
as this. The age of Cromwell and Blake was over. 

76 



76 ANDKEW MARVELL [chap. 

The remainder of Marvell's life (save so far as personal 
friendship sweetened it) was spent in politics, public 
business, in concocting roughly rhymed and bitter 
satirical poems, and in the composition of prose 
pamphlets. 

Throiigh it all Marvell remained very much the 
man of letters, though one with a great natural apti- 
tude for business. His was always the critical attitude. 
He was the friend of Milton and Harrington, of the 
political philosophers who invented paper constitutions 
in the " Rota " Club, and of the new race of men whose 
thoughts turned to Natural Science, and who founded 
the Royal Society. Office he never thought of. He 
could have had it had he chosen, for he was a man 
of mark, even of distinction, from the first. Clarendon 
has told us how members of the House of Commons 
" got on " in the Long Parliament of Charles the 
Second. It was full of the king's friends, who ran 
out of the House to tell their shrewd master the gossip 
of the lobbies, "commended this man and discom- 
mended another who deserved better, and would many 
times, when His Majesty spoke well of any man, ask 
His Majesty if he would give them leave to let that 
person know how gracious His Majesty was to him, 
or bring him to kiss his hand. To which he commonly 
consenting, every one of his servants delivered some 
message from him to a Parliament man, and invited 
him to Court, as if the King would be willing to see 
him. And by this means the rooms at Court were 
always full of the members of the House of Commons. 
This man brought to kiss his hand, and the King 
induced to confer with that man and to thank him for 
his affection, which could never conclude without some 
general expression of grace or promise, which the 
poor gentleman always interpreted to his own advan- 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 77 

tage, and expected some fruit from it that it could 
never yield." 

The suspicious Clarendon, already shaking to his 
fall, goes on to add, ''all which, being contrary to all 
former order, did the King no good, and rendered those 
unable to do him service who were inclined to it." ^ 

It is a lifelike picture Clarendon draws of the 
crowded rooms, and of the witty king moving about 
fooling vanity, ambition, and corruption to the top 
of their bent. That the king chose his own ministers 
is plain enough. 

Mar veil was at the beginning well disposed towards 
Charles. They had some points in common ; and 
among them a quick sense of humour and a turn for 
business. But the member for Hull must soon have 
recognised that there was no place for an honest quick- 
witted man in any Stuart administration. 

Marvell and his great chief remained in their offices 
until the close of the year 1659, when the impending 
Restoration enforced their retirement. Milton used 
his leisure to pour forth excited tracts to prove how 
easy it would still be to establish a Free Common- 
wealth. Once again, and for the last time, he prompted 
the age to quit its clogs 

" by the known rules of ancient liberty." 

These pamphlets of Milton's prove how little that 
solitary thinker ever knew of the real mind and 
temper of the English people. 

The Lord Richard Cromwell was exactly the sort 
of eldest son a great soldier like Oliver, who had 
put his foot on fortune's neck, was likely to have. 
Richard (1626-1712) was not, indeed, born in the 
purple, but his early manhood was nurtured in it. 

1 Clarendon's Life, vol. ii. p. 443. 



78 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

Religion, as represented by long sermons, tiresome 
treatises, and prayerful exercises, bored him to death. 
Of enthusiasm he had not a trace, nor was he bred 
to arms. He delighted in hu.nting, in the open air, 
and the company of sportsmen. Whatever came his 
way easily, and as a matter of right, he was well con- 
tent to take. He bore himself well on State occasions, 
and could make a better speech than ever his father 
was able to do. But he was not a " restless " Crom- 
well, and had no faith in his destiny. I do not know 
whether he had ever read Don Quixote, in Shelton's 
translation, a very popular book of the time ; probably 
not, for, though Chancellor of the University of Oxford, 
Richard was not a reading man, but if he had, he must 
have sympathised with Sancho Panza's attitude of 
mind towards the famous island. 

" If your highness has no mind that the government you 
promised should be given me, God made me of less, and 
perhaps it may be easier for Sancho, the Squire, to get to 
Heaven than for Sancho, the Governor. In the dark all cats 
are gray." 

The new Protector took up the reins of power with 
proper forms and ceremonies, and at once proceeded 
to summon a Parliament, an Imperial Cromwellian 
Parliament, containing representatives both from Scot- 
land and Ireland. In this Parliament Andrew Marvell 
sat for the first time as one of the two members for 
Kingston-upon-Hull. His election took place on the 
10th of January 1659, being the first county day after 
the sheriff had received the writ. Five candidates 
were nominated : Thomas Strickland, Andrew Marvell, 
John Ramsden, Henry Smyth, and Sir Henry Vane, 
and a vote being taken in the presence of the mayor, 
aldermen, and many of the burgesses, John Ramsden 
and Andrew Marvell were declared duly elected. 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 79 

Nobody to-day, glancing his eye over a list of the 
knights and burgesses who made up Richard Crom- 
well's first and last Parliament, would ever guess that 
it represented an order of things of the most recent 
date which was just about to disappear. On paper 
it has a solid look. The fine old crusted Parliamentary 
names with which the clerks were to remain so long 
familiar as the members trooped out to divide were 
more than well represented.^ The Drakes of Amer- 
sham were there ; Boscawens, Bullers, and Trelawneys 
flocked from Cornwall ; Sir Wilfred Lawson sat for 
Cumberland, and his son for Cockermouth ; a Knightly 
represented Northamptonshire, whilst Lucys from 
Charlecote looked after Warwick, both town and 
county. Arthur Onslow came from Surrey, a Town- 
shend from Norfolk, and, of course, a Bankes from 
Corfe Castle ; ^ Oxford University, contented, as she 
occasionally is, to be represented by a great man, had 
chosen Sir Matthew Hale, whilst the no less useful 
and laborious Thurloe sat for the sister University. 
Anthony Ashley Cooper was there, but in opposition, 
snuffing the morrow. Mildmays, Lawleys, Bingham s, 
Herberts, Pelhams, all travelled up to London with 
the Lord-Protector's writs in their pockets. A less 
revolutionary assembly never met, though there was 
a regicide or two among them. But when the mem- 
bers found themselves alone together there was some 
loose talk. 

1 The clerks, however, only counted the members who voted, 
and kept no record of their names. Mr. Gladstone remembered 
the alteration being made in 1836, and how unpopular it was. 
The change was a greater revolution than the Reform Bill. 
See The Unreformecl House of Commons by Edward Posselt, 
vol. i. p. 587. 

2 " And a Parliament had lately met 
Without a single Bankes." — Praed. 



80 ANDKEW MARVELL [chap. 

On the 27th of January 1659 Marvell attended for 
the first time in his place, when the new Protector 
opened Parliament, and made a speecli in the House 
of Lords, which was pronounced at the time to be " a 
very handsome oration." 

The first business of the Commons was to elect a 
Speaker, nor was their choice a very lucky one, for 
it first fell on Chaloner Chute, who speedily breaking 
down in healtli, the Recorder of London was appointed 
his substitute, but the Recorder being on his death- 
bed at the time, and Chute dying very shortly after- 
wards, Thomas Bampfield was elected Speaker, and 
continued so to be until the Parliament was dissolved 
by proclamation on the 22nd of April. This procla- 
mation was Richard Cromwell's last act of State. 

Marvell's first Parliament was both short and inglori- 
ous. One only of its resolutions is worth quoting : — 

" That a very considerable navy be forthwith provided, 
and put to sea for the safety of the Commonwealth and the 
preservation of the trade and commerce thei-eof." 

It was, however, the army and not the navy that 
had to be reckoned with — an army unpaid, angry, 
suspicious, and happily divided. I must not trace 
the history of faction. There is no less exalted page 
in English history since the days of Stephen, Monk 
is its fitting hero, and Charles the Second its expensive 
saviour of society. The story how the Restoration 
was engineered by General Monk, Avho, if vulgar, was 
adroit, both on land and sea, is best told from Monk's 
point of view in the concluding chapter of Baker''s 
Chronicle (Sir Roger de Coverley's favourite Sunday 
reading), whilst that old-fashioned remnant, who still 
love to read history for fun, may not object to be 
told that they Avill find printed in the Report of the 



IV.] IN TPIE HOUSE OF COMMONS 81 

Leyborne-Popham Papers {Historical Manuscripts Com- 
mission, 1899, p. 204) a Narrative of the Restoration, 
by Mr. John Collins, the Chief Butler of the Inner 
Temple, proving in great and highly diverting detail 
how this remarkable event was really the work not 
so much of Monk as of the Chief Butler. 

Richard Cromwell having slipped the collar, the 
officers assumed command, as they were only too 
ready to do, and recalled the old, dishonoured, but 
pertinacious Rump Parliament, which, though muster- 
ing at first but forty-two members, at once began to 
talk and keep journals as if nothing had happened 
since the day ten years before, when it was sent about 
its business. Old Speaker Lenthall was routed out of 
obscurity, and much against his will, and despite his 
protests, clapped once more into the chair. Dr. John 
Owen, an old parliamentary preaching hand, was once 
again requisitioned to preach before the House, which 
he did at enormous length one fine Sunday in May. 

The Rump did not prove a popular favourite. It 
was worse than Old Noll himself, who could at least 
thrash both Dutchman and Spaniard, and be even 
more feared abroad than he was hated at home. The 
City of London, then almost an Estate of the Realm, 
declared for a Free Parliament, and it soon became 
apparent to every one that the whole country was eager 
to return as soon as possible to the old mould. No- 
thing now stood between Charles and his own but 
half a dozen fierce old soldiers and their dubious, dis- 
contented, unpaid men. 

It was once commonly supposed (it is so no longer), 
that the Restoration party was exclusively composed 
of dispossessed Cavaliers, bishops in hiding, ejected 
parsons, high-flying jure divino Episcopalians, talkative 
toss-pots, and the great pleasure-loving crowd, cruelly 



82 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

repressed under the rule of the saints. Had it been 
left to these ragged regiments, the issue would have 
been doubtful, and the result very different. The 
Presbyterian ministers who occupied the rectories 
and vicarages of the Church of England and their 
well-to-do flocks in both town and country were, with 
but few exceptions, all for King Charles and a restored 
monarchy. In this the ministers may have shown a 
sound political instinct, for none of them had any more 
mind than the Anglican bishops to tolerate Papists, 
Socinians, Quakers, and Fifth Monarchy men, but in 
their management of the business of the Restoration 
these divines exposed themselves to the same condem- 
nation that Clarendon in an often-quoted passage 
passed upon his own clerical allies. When read by 
the light of the Act of " Uniformity," the " Corpora- 
tion," the " Five Mile," and the " Conventicle " Acts, 
the conduct of the Presbyterians seems recklessness 
itself, whilst the ignorance their ministers displayed 
of the temper of the people they had lived amongst 
all their lives, and whom they adjured to cry God 
save the King, but not to drink his Majesty's health 
(because health-drinking was forbidden in the Old 
Testament), would be startling were it not so emi- 
nently characteristic.^ 

The Rump, amidst the ridicule and contempt of 
the populace, was again expelled by military force on 
the 13th of October 1659. The officers were divided 
in opinion, some supporting, others, headed by Lambert, 
opposing the Parliament; but vis major, or superior 
cunning, was on the side of Lambert, who placed his 
soldiers in the streets leading to Westminster Hall, 
and when the Speaker came in his coach, his horses 

^ See Dr. Halley's Lancashire — its Puritanism and Noncon- 
formity, vol. ii. pp. 1-140, a most informing book. 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 83 

were turned, and he was conducted very civilly home. 
The regiments that should have resisted, " observing 
that they were exposed to derision," peaceably returned 
to their quarters. 

Monk, in the meanwhile, was advancing with his 
army from Edinburgh, and affected not to approve of 
the force put upon Parliament. The feeling for a Free 
Parliament increased in strength and violence every 
day. The Rump was for a third time restored in 
December by the section of the London army that 
supported its claim. Lenthall was once more in the 
chair, and the journals were resumed without the least 
notice of past occurrences. Monk, having reached 
London amidst great excitement, went down to the 
House and delivered an ambiguous speech. Up to the 
last Monk seems to have remained uncertain what to 
do. The temper of the City, which was fiercely anti- 
Rump, may have decided him. At all events he 
invited the secluded, that is the expelled, members of 
the old Long Parliament to take their seats along with 
the others, and in a formal declaration addressed to 
Parliament, dated the 21st of February 1660, he 
counselled it among other things to dissolve legally 
"in order to make way for a succession of Parlia- 
ments." In a word. Monk declared for a Free Parlia- 
ment. Great indeed were the national rejoicings. 

On the 16th of March 1660 a Bill was read a third 
time dissolving the Parliament begun and holden at 
Westminster, 3rd November 1640, and for the calling 
and holding of a Parliament at Westminster on the 
25th of April 1660. This time an end was really 
made of the Rump, though for many a long day there 
were parliamentary pedants to be found in the land 
ready to maintain that the Long Parliament had never 
been legally dissolved and still de jure existed ; so 



84 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

long, I presume, as any single member of it remained 
alive. 

Marvell was not a "Rumper," but on the 2nd of 
April 1660 he was again elected for Hull to sit in what 
is usually called the Convention Parliament. John 
Ramsden was returned at the head of the poll with 
227 votes, Marvell receiving 141. There were four 
defeated candidates. 

With this Convention Parliament begins Marvell's 
remarkable correspondence, on fine folio sheets of paper, 
with the corporation of Hull, whose faithful servant 
he remained until death parted them in 1678. 

This correspondence, which if we include in it, as 
we well may, the letters to the Worshipful Society of 
Masters and Pilots of the Trinity House in Hull, 
numbers upwards of 350 letters, and with but one 
considerable gap (from July 1663 to October 1665) 
covers the whole period of Marvell's membership, is, 
I believe, unique in our public records. The letters 
are preserved at Hull, where I hope care is taken to 
preserve them from the autograph hunter and the 
autograph thief. Captain Thompson printed a great 
part of this correspondence in 1776, and Mr. Grosart 
gave the world the whole of it in the second volume 
of his edition of Marvell's complete works. 

An admission may as well be made at once. This 
correspondence is not so interesting as it might have 
been expected to prove. Marvell did not write letters 
for his biographer, nor to instruct posterity, nor to 
serve any party purpose, nor even to exhibit honest 
emotion, but simply to tell his employers, whose wages 
he took, what was happening at Westminster. He 
kept his reflections either to himself or for his political 
broadsheets, and indeed they were seldom of the kind 
it would have been safe to entrust to the post. 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 85 

Good Mr. Grosart fusses and frets terribly over 
Marvell's astonishing capacity for chronicling in sombre 
silence every kind of legislative abomination. It is at 
times a little hard to understand it, for Hull was what 
may be called a Puritan place. No doubt caution 
dictated some of the reticence — but the reserve of 
Marvell's character is one of the few traits of his 
personality that has survived. He was a satirist, not 
an enthusiast. 

I will give the first letter in extenso to serve as a 
specimen, and a very favourable one, of the whole 
correspondence : — 

" Nov. 17, 1660. 

" Gentlemen, my worthy Friends, — Although during 
the necessary absence of my partner, Mr. Ramsden, I write 
with but halfe apenn, and can scarce perswade myselfe to send 
you so imperfect an account of your own and the publick 
affairs, as I needs nmst for want of his assistance ; yet I had 
rather expose mine own defects to your good interpretation, 
then excuse thereby a totall neglect of my duty, and that trust 
which is divided upon me. At my late absence out of Town 
I had taken such order that if you had commanded me any 
thing, I might soon haue received it, and so returned on 
purpose to this place to haue obeyed you. But hearing 
notliing of that nature howeuer, I was present the first day of 
the Parliament's sitting, and tooke care to write to Mr. Maior 
what work we had cut out. Since when, we have had little 
new, but onely been making a progresse in those things I 
then mentioned. There is yet brought in an Act in which of 
all others your corporation is the least concerned : that is, 
where wives shall refuse to cohabit with their husbands, that 
in such case the husband shall not be liable to pay any debts 
which she may run into, for clothing, diet, lodging, or other 
expenses. I wish with all my heart you were no more touched 
in a vote that we haue made for bringing in an Act of a new 
Assessment for six moneths, of 70,0001i.^er mensem, to begin 
next January. The truth is, the delay ere mouyes can be got 



86 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

in, eats up a great part of all that is levying, and that grow- 
ing charge of the Army and Navy doubles upon us. And 
that is all that can be said for excuse of ourselues to the 
Country, to whom we had giuen our own hopes of no further 
sessment to be raised, but must now needs incurre the censure 
of improvidence before or prodigality now, though it becomes 
no private member, the resolution having passed the House, 
to interjaose further his own judgment in a thing that can not 
be remedied ; and it will be each man's ingenuity not to 
grudge an after-payment for that settlement and freedoms 
from Armyes and Navyes, which before he would haue been 
glad to purchase with his whole fortune. There remain some 
eight Kegiments to be disbanded, but those all horse in a 
manner, and some seauenteen shipps to be payd of, that haue 
laid so long upon charge in the harboui, beside fourscore 
shipps which are reckoned to us for this Winter guard. But 
after that, all things are to go upon his Majestye's own purse 
out of the Tunnage and Poundage and his other revenues. 
But there being so great a provision made for mony, I doubt 
not but ere we rise, to see the whole army disbanded, and 
according to the Act, hope to see your Town once more 
ungarrisond, in which I should be glad and happy to be in- 
strumentall to the uttermost. For I can not but remember, 
though then a child, those blessed days when the youth of 
your own town were ti-ained for your militia, and did, me- 
thought, become their arms much better than any soldiers 
that I haue seen there since. And it will not be amisse if 
you please (now that we are about a new Act of regulating 
the Militia, that it may be as a standing strength, but not as 
ill as a perpetuall Army to the Nation) to signify to me any 
thing in that matter that were according to your ancient 
custome and desirable for you. For though I can promise 
litle, yet I intend all things for your service. The Act for 
review of the Poll bill proceeds, and that for making this 
Declaration of his Majesty a Law in religious matters. Order 
likewise is giuen for drawing up all the votes made during 
our last sitting, in the businesse of Sales of Bishops' and 
Deans' and Chapters' lands into an Act, which I should be 
glad to see passed. The purchasers the other day offerd the 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 87 

house 600,00011. in ready mony, and to make the Bishops', 
etc., revenue as good or better then before. But the House 
thought it not fit or seasonable to hearken to it. We are so 
much the inore concernd to see that great interest of the 
purchasers satisfyed and quieted, at least in that way which 
our own votes haue propounded. On Munday next we are 
to return to the consideration of apportioning 100,00011. per 
annum upon all the lands in the nation, in lieu of the Court 
of Wards. The debate among the Countyes, each thinking it 
self overrated, makes the successe of that buslnesse something 
casuall, and truly I shall not assist it mucli for my part, for 
it is little reason that your Town should contribute In that 
charge. The Excise bill for longer continuance (I wish it 
proue not too long) will come in also next weeke. And I 
foresee we shall be called upon shortly to effect our vote 
made the former sitting, of raising his Majestle's revenue to 
1,200,00011. per Annum. I do not love to write so much of this 
mony news. But I think you haue observed that Parliaments 
have been always made use of to that purpose, and though we 
may buy gold too deare, yet we must at any rate be glad of 
Peace, Freedom, and a good Conscience. Mr. Maior tells me, 
your duplicates of the Poll are coming up. I shall go with 
them to the Exchequer and make your excuse, if any be 
requisite. My long silence hath made me now trespasse on 
the other hand in a long letter, but I doubt not of your 
good construction of so much familiarity and trouble from, 
Gentlemen, your most affectionate friend and servant, 

" Andr : Marvell. 

"Westminster, Nov. 17, 1660." 



Although this first letter of the Hull correspondence 
is dated the 17th of November 1660, the Convention 
Parliament began its sittings on the 25th of April. 

In composition this Convention Parliament was very 
like Richard Cromwell's, and indeed it contained many 
of the same members, whose loyalty, however, was less 
restrained than in 1659. All the world knew what 
brought this Parliament together. It was to make 



88 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

the nation's peace with its king, either on terras or 
without terms. " We ai-e all Royalists now " are 
words which must often have been on the lips of the 
members of this House. One can imagine the smiles, 
half grim, half ironical, that would accompany their 
utterance. Such a right-about-face could never be 
dignified. It is impossible not to be reminded of 
schoolboys at the inevitable end of ''a barring out." 
The sarcastic comment of Clarendon has not lost its 
sting. '' From this time there was such an emulation 
and impatience in Lords, Commons, and City, and 
generally over the Kingdom, wlio should make the 
most lively expressions of their duty and of their joy, 
that a man could not but wonder where those people 
dwelt who had done all the mischief and kept the 
King so many years from enjoying the comfort and 
support of such excellent subjects."^ 

The most significant sentence in Marvell's first letter 
to his constituents is that in which he refers to the 
Bill for making Charles's declaration in religious 
matters the law of the land. Had the passing of any 
such Bill been possible, how different the history of 
England would have been ! 

The declaration Marvell is referring to was con- 
tained in the famous message from Breda, which was 
addressed by Charles to all his loving subjects of what 
degree or quality, and was expressed as follows : — 

" And because the passion and uncharitableness of the 
times have produced several opinions in Keligion by which 
men are engaged in parties and animosities against each other 
(which, when they sliall hereafter unite in a freedom of con- 
versation, will be composed or better understood) wedo declare 
a liberty to tender Consciences, and that no man shall be dis- 
quieted or called in question for differences of opinion in 

1 Clarendon's History, vol, vi. p. 249. 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 89 

matters of Religion which do not disturb the peace of the 
Kingdom; and that we shall be ready to consent to such an 
Act of Parliament as upon mature deliberation shall be offered 
to us for the full granting of that indulgence." 

It is only doing the king bare justice to say that 
he was always ready and willing to keep this part of 
his royal word — but it proved an impossibility. 

A Eoman Catholic as a matter of creed, a Ilobbist 
in conversation, a sensualist in practice, and the 
shrewdest though most indolent of cynics in council, 
Charles, in this matter of religious toleration, would 
gladly have kept his word, not indeed because it was 
his word, for on the point of honour he was indifferent, 
but because it jumped with his humour, and would 
have mitigated the hard lot of the Catholics. Charles 
was not a theorist, all his tastes being eminently 
practical, not to say scientific. He was not a tyrant, 
but a de facto man from head to heel. For the jure 
divino of the English Episcopate he cared as little as 
Oliver had ever done for the jure divino of the English 
Crown. Oliver once said, and he was not given to 
braggadocio, that he would fire his pistol at the king 
" as soon as at another if he met him in battle," and 
the second Charles would have thought no more of 
beheading an Anglican bishop than he did of sending 
Sir Harry Vane to the scaffold. Honesty and virtue, 
on the rare occasions Charles encountered them, he 
admired much as a painter admires the colours of a 
fine sunset. Above everything else Charles was deter- 
mined never again, if he could help it, to be sent on his 
travels, to be snubbed and starved in foreign courts. 

Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie, the first and 
best translator of Rabelais, is said to have died of 
laughing on hearing of the Restoration ; Charles did 
not die, but he must have laughed inwardly at the 



90 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

spectacle that met his eyes everywhere as he made his 
often-described progress from Dover to London, and 
examined the gorgeous beds and quilts, fine linen and 
carpets, couches, horses and liveries, his faithful 
Commons had been at the pains and at the expense 
of providing for his comfort. 

A few years afterwards Marvell wrote the following 
lines : — 

" Of a tall statm-e and of sable hue, 
Much like the son of Kish, that lofty Jew ; 
Twelve years complete he suffered in exile 
And kept his father's asses all the while. 
At length, by wonderful impulse of fate, 
The people called him home to help the state, 
And what is more they sent him money too 
To clothe him all from head to foot anew ; 
Nor did he such small favours then disdain, 
Who in his thirtieth year began his reign." ^ 

The " small favours " grew in size year by year. 

Why it was impossible for Charles to keep his word 
may be read in Clarendon's Life, and in the history of 
the Savoy Conference, and need not be restated here. 
In the opinion of the Anglican clergy, the king's 
divine right stood no higher than their own. They 
too had suffered in exile. They had been "robbed" 
of their tithes, and turned out of their palaces, rec- 
tories and vicarages, and excluded from the churches 
they still called "theirs." Their Book of Common 
Prayer was no longer in common use, having been 
banished by the " Directory of Public Worship " since 
1645. So late as July 1, 1G60, Pepys records attend- 
ing a service in the Abbey, and adds "No Common 
Prayer yet." If we find ourselves wondering why 
the Anglican party should have been so powerful in 

1 An Historical Poem. — Grosait, vol. i. p. 343. 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 91 

1660, our wonder ought not to be greater than is 
excited by the power of the Puritan party when Laud 
Avas put to death. Both parties were, on each occa- 
sion, in a minority. Though England has never been 
long priest-ridden, it has often been priest-led. 

The Convention Parliament did all that was ex- 
pected of it. It was, however irregularly summoned, 
a truly representative assembly. Its members all 
swore — what will not members of Parliament swear ? 
— that the king was supreme in Church and State, the 
only rightful king of the realm and of all other his 
dominions, and that from their hearts they abhorred, 
detested, and abjured the damnable doctrine that 
princes, excommunicated or deprived of the Pope, 
might be murdered by their subjects. They pro- 
ceeded to pass a very useful Act of Indemnity and 
Oblivion, agreeing to let bygones be bygones, except 
in certain named cases. They ordered Mr. John 
Milton to be taken into custody, and prosecuted 
(which he never was) by the Attorney-General. Later 
on the poet was released from custody, and we find 
Mr. Marvell complaining to the House that their 
sergeant had extracted £150 in fees before he would 
let Mr. Milton go. On which Sir Heneage Finch, 
afterwards Lord Chancellor, laconically observed that 
Milton deserved hanging. He certainly got off easily, 
but, as he lived to publish Paradise Lost, Paradise 
Regained, and Samson Agonistes, he may be said to 
have earned his freedom. All his poetry put together 
never brought him in a third of the sum the sergeant 
got for letting him out of prison. General Monk, the 
man-midwife, who so skilfully assisted at that great 
Birth of Time, the Restoration, was made a duke, and 
Cromwell's army, so long the force behind the 
supreme power, was paid its arrears and (two regi- 



92 ANDEEW MARVELL [chap. 

ments excepted) disbanded. ^' Fifty thousand men," 
says Macaulay, ''accustomed to the profession of 
arms, were thrown upon the world ... in a few 
months there remained not a trace indicating that 
the most formidable army in the world had just been 
absorbed in the mass of the community." ^ 

After this the House of Commons fell to discussing 
religion, and made the sad discovery that differences 
of opinion still existed. In these circumstances they 
decided to refer the matter to their pious king, and 
to such divines as he might choose. They then voted 
large sums of money for the royal establishment, and, 
it being the very end of August, adjourned till the 
6th of November. As for making constitutional 
terms with the king, they never attempted it, 
though Sir Matthew Hale is credited with an attempt 
to induce them to do so. Any proposals of the kind 
must have failed. The people were in no mood for 
making constitutions. 

Having met again on the 6th of November, Marvell, 
in a letter to the Mayor and Aldermen of Hull, dated 
the 27th of the month, reports that " the House fell 
upon the making out of the King's revenue to 
£1,200,000 a year." "The Customs are estimated 
toward £500,000 per annum in the revenue. His lands 
and fee farms £250,000. The Excise of Beer and Ale 
£300,000, the rest arise out of the Post Office, Wine 
Licenses, Stannaries Court, Probate of Wills, Post- 
fines, Forests, and other rights of the Crown. The 
excise of Foreign Commodities is to be continued 
apart until satisfaction of public debts and engagements 
secured upon the excise." 

This settlement of revenue marks " the beginning 
of a time." Cromwell, as Cowley puts it in his Dis- 
1 Macaulay"s Ilititonj, vol. i. p. 154. 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 93 

course, by far the ablest indictment of Oliver ever 
penned, " took armes against two hundred thousand 
pounds a year, and raised them himself to above two 
millions." It is true. Cromwell spent the money 
honestly and efficiently, and chiefly on a navy that 
enabled him to wrest the command of the sea from 
the Dutch, to secure the carrying trade, and to chal- 
lenge the world for supremacy in the Indies, both 
East and West. In doing this, he had the instinct 
of the whole nation behind him. But it was 
expensive. 

Had Charles been the most honest and thrifty of 
men, instead of one of the most dishonest and extra- 
vagant, he must have found his financial position a 
very difficult one. He was poorer than Cromwell. 
The feudal taxation had fallen into desuetude. To 
revive wardships, etc., was impossible, to recover 
arrears hopeless. There was nothing for it but 
scientific taxation. One of his first Acts contains a 
schedule of taxed articles extending over fifteen double- 
columned pages of a quarto volume. To raise this 
revenue was difficult — in fact impossible, and the 
amount actually obtained was always far below the 
estimates. 

Marvell's letter concludes thus : — 

" To-morrow is the Bill for enacting his Majesty's declara- 
tion in religious matters and to have its first reading. It is 
said that on Sunday next Doctor Reynolds shall be created 
Bishop of Norwich." 

The rumour about Reynolds's bishopric proved to be 
true. The new bishop was a very " moderate " Angli- 
can indeed, and his appointment was meant as a sop 
to the Presbyterians. Richard Baxter and Edmund 
Calamy refused similar preferment. 



94 ANDKEW MARVELL [chap. 

On the 29th of November Marvell's letter contains 
the following passage : — 

*' Yesterday the Bill of the King's Declaration in religious 
matters was read for the first time ; but upon the question for 
a second reading 'twas carried 183 against 157 in the negative, 
so there is an end of that Bill and for those excellent things 
therein. We must henceforth rely only upon his Majesty's 
goodness, who, I must needs say, hath hitherto been more 
ready to give than we to receive." 

It is a noticeable feature of this correspondence that 
Marvell seldom mentions which Avay he voted himself. 
The letter of the 4th of December contains some 
interesting matter : — 

" Gentlemen, — Since my last, upon Thursday, the Bill for 
Vicarages hath been carryed up to the Lords ; and a IMessage 
to them from our House that they would expedite the Bill for 
confirmation of Magna Charta, that for confirmation of mar- 
riages, and other bills of publick concernment, which haue laid 
by them euer since our last sitting, not returned to us. We 
had then the Bill for six moneths assesment in consideration, 
and read the Bill for taking away Court of Wards and Pur- 
veyance, and establishing the moiety of the Excise of Beere 
and ale in perpetuum, about which we sit euery afternoon in 
a Grand Committee. Upon Sunday last were consecrated in 
the Abby at Westminster, Doctor Cossins, Bishop of Durham, 
Sterne of Carlile, Gauden of Exeter, Ii'onside of Bristow, 
Loyd of Landaffe, Lucy of St. Dauids, Lany, the seuenth, 
whose diocese I remember not at present, and to-day they 
keep their feast in Haberdasher's hall, in London. Dr. 
Reinolds was not of the number, who is intended for Norwich. 
A Congedelire is gone dowai to Hereford for Dr. Monk, the 
Generall's brother, at present Provost of Eaton. 'Tis thought 
that since our throwing out the Bill of the King's Declaration, 
Mr. Calamy, and other moderate men, will be resolute in 
refusing of Bishopricks. . . . To-day our House was upon the 
Bill of Attainder of those that haue been executed, those that 
are fled, and of Cromwell, Bradshaw, Ireton, and Pride, and 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 95 

'tis ordered that the carkasses and coffins of the four last 
named, shall be drawn with what expedition possible, upon 
an hurdle to Tyburn, there (to) be hanged up for a while, and 
then buryed under the gallows. . . . 

" Westminster, Dec. 4, 1660." 

Marvell's cool reporting of the hideous indignity 
inflicted upon his old master, and allowing it to pass 
sn& silentio, is one of the many occasions that stirred 
Mr. Grosart's wonder. ]S"erves were tough in those 
days. Pepys tells us unconcernedly enough how, after 
seeing Lord Southampton sworn in at the Court of 
Exchequer as Lord Treasurer, he noticed " the heads 
of Cromwell, Bradshaw, and Ireton set up at the further 
end of Westminster Hall." It is quite possible Lady 
Fauconberg may have seen the same sight.^ 

The Convention Parliament was dissolved on the 
29th of December 1660. 

On 1st April 1661 Marvell was returned for the 
third and last time for Hull, for Charles the Second's 
first Parliament was of unconscionable long duration, 
not being dissolved till January 1679, after Marvell's 
death. It is known in history as the Pensionary or 
Long Parliament. The election figures were as 
below : — 

Colonel Gilbey, . . . 294 

Mr. Andrew Marvell, . . 240 

Mr. Edward Barnard, . . 195 

Mr. John Ramsden, . . 122 

Marvell was not present at or before the election, for 
on the 6th of April he writes : — 

1 1 am acquainted with the romantic story which would have 
us believe that Lady Fanconberg, foretelling the time to come, 
had caused some other body than her fatlier's to be buried in 
the Abbey (see Notes and Queries, 5th October 1878, and Way- 
len's House of Cromwell, p. 311). 



96 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

" I perceive by Mr. Mayor that you have again (as if it 
were grown a thing of course) made choice of me now, the 
third time, to serve for you in Parliament, which as I cannot 
attribute to anything but your constancy, so shall I, God 
willing, as in gratitude obliged, with no less constancy and 
vigour continue to execute your commands and study your 
service." 

A word may here be said about payment of borough 
members. The members' fee was 6s. 8d. for every day 
the Parliament lasted. The wages were paid by the 
corporation out of the borough funds. It was never a 
popular charge. Burgesses in many places cared as 
little for M. P.'s as do some of their successors for free 
libraries. Prynne, perhaps the greatest parliamentary 
lawyer that ever lived, told Pepys one day, as they 
were driving to the Temple, that the number of 
burgesses to be returned to Parliament for any parti- 
cular borough was not, for aught Prynne could find, 
fixed by law, but was at first left to the discretion of 
the sheriff, and that several boroughs had complained 
of the sheriff's putting them to the charge of sending 
up burgesses. 

In August 1661 the corporation paid Marvell £28 
for his fee as one of their burgesses, being 6s. 8d. a day 
for eighty-four days, the length of the Convention 
Parliament. Marvell continued to take his wages until 
the end of his days ; but it is perhaps a mistake to 
suppose he was the very last member to do so. It was, 
however, unusual in Marvell's time.^ 

1 See The Unreformed House of Commons, by Edward Porritt, 
vol. i. p. 51. Marvell's old enemy, Parker, Bishop of Oxford, in 
his History of his oivn Time, composed after Mavvell's deatli, 
reviles his dead antagonist for having taken this payment 
which, the bishoii says, was made by a custom which "had a 
long time been antiquated and out of date." "Gentlemen," 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 97 

This Pensionary Parliament, though of a very de- 
cided "Church and King" complexion, was not in its 
original composition a body lacking ch.a'acter or inde- 
pendence, but it steadily deteriorated in both respects. 
Vacancies, as they occurred, and they occurred very 
frequently in those days of short lives, were filled up 
by courtiers and pensioners. 

In the small tract, entitled Flagellum Parliamentum, 
which is a highly libellous " Dod," often attributed to 
Marvell, a record is preserved of more than two hundred 
members of this Parliament in 1675. Despite some 
humorous touches, this Flagellum Parliamentum is still 
disagreeable to read. But the most graphic picture 
we have of this Parliament is to be found in one of 
Lord Shaftesbury's political tracts entitled '' A letter 
from a Parliament man to his Friend " (1675) : — 

" Sir, — I see you are greatly scandalized at cm' slow and 
confused Proceedings. I confess you have cause enough ; but 
were you but within these walls for one half day, and saw 
the strange make and complexion that this house is of, you 
would wonder as much that ever you wondered at it ; for we 
are such a pied Parliament, that none can say of what colour 
we are; for we consist of Old Cavaliers, Old Round-Heads, 
Indigent-Courtiers, and true Country Gentlemen : the two 
latter are most numerous, and would in probability bring 
things to some issue were they not clogged with the numerous 
uncertainties of the former. For the Old Cavalier, grown 
aged, and almost past his vice, is damnable godly and makes 
hisdotingpietymoreaplague to the world than his debauchery 
was, for he is so much a by-got to the B (ishop) that he forces 
his Loyalty to strike sail to his Religion, and could be content 
to pare the nails a little of the Civil Government, so you 

says the bishop, " despised so vile a stipend," yet Marvell 
required it " for the sake of a bare subsistence, although in this 
mean poverty he was nevertheless haughty and insolent." In 
Parker's opinion poor men should be humble. 



98 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

would but let him sharpen the Ecclesiastical Talons: which 
behaviour of his so exasperates the Round-Head, that he on 
the other hand cares not what increases the Interest of the 
Crown receives, so he can but diminish that of the miter : so 
that the Round-Head had rather enslave the Man than the 
Conscience : the Cavalier rather the Conscience than the Man ; 
there being a sufficient stock of animosity as proper matter to 
work upon. Upon these, therefore, the Courtier mutually 
plays, for if any Ante-court motion be made he gains the 
Round-Head either tooppose or absent by telling them. If they 
will join him now he will join them for Liberty of Conscience. 
And when any affair is started on behalf of the Country he 
assures the Cavaliers, If they will then stand by him he will 
then join with them in promoting a Bill against the fanatics. 
Thus play they on both hands. . . . Wherefore it were happy 
that he had neither Round-Head nor Cavalier in the House, for 
they are each of them so prejudicate against the other that 
their sitting here signifies nothing but their fostering their old 
venom and lying at catch to stop every advantage to bear 
down each other, though it be in the destruction of their 
country. For if the Round-Heads bring in a good bill the Old 
Cavalier opposes it, for no other reason but because they 
brought it in." ^ 

Such was the theatre of Marvell's public actions for 
the rest of his days, and if at times he may need for- 
giveness for the savagery of his satire, it ought to be 
found easy to forgive him. 

The two members for Hull were soon immersed in 
matters of much local importance. They began by 
quarrelling with one anothei*, Marvell writing " the 
bond of civility betwixt Col. Gilby and myself being 
unhappily snappt in pieces, and in such manner that 
I cannot see how it is possible ever to knit them 
again." House of Commons quarrels are usually soon 
made up, and so was this one. The custom was for 
both members to sign these letters, though they are 

1 Parliamentary History, vol. iv., App. No. III. 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 99 

all wi'itten in Marvell's hand — but if this was for any 
reason inconvenient, Marvell signed alone. No letters, 
unless in Marvell's writing, are preserved at Hull, 
which is a curious fact. 

One of these bits of local business related to a patent 
alleged to have been granted by the Crown to certain 
persons, authorising them to erect and maintain ballast 
wharfs in the various ports, and to make charges in 
respect of them. This was resented by the members 
for the ports, and on Marvell's motion the matter was 
referred to the Committee of Grievances, before whom 
the patentees were summoned. When they came it 
appeared that the patent warranted none of the 
exactions that had been demanded, and also that 
the warrant sent down to Hull naming these charges 
was nothing more than a draft framed by the patentees 
themselves, and not authorised in any way. The 
patent was at once suspended. Marvell, like a true 
member of Parliament, wishes to get any little local 
credit that may be due for such prompt action, and 
writes : — 

" In this thing (although I count all things I can do for 
your service to be mere trifles, and not worth taking notice of 
in respect of what I owe you) I must do myself that right to 
let you know that I, and I alone, have had the happiness to 
do that little which hitherto is effected." 

The matter required delicate handling, for a reason 
Marvell gives : " Because, if the King's right in placing 
such impositions should be weakened, neither should 
he have power to make a grant of them to you." 

Another much longer business related to a light- 
house, which some outsiders were anxious to build in 
the Humber. The corporation of Hull, acting on 
Marvell's advice, had petitioned the Privy Council, 



100 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

and were asked by tlieir business-like member '' to 
send us up a dormant credit for an hundred pound, 
whicli we yet indeed have no use of, but if need be 
must have ready at hand to reward such as will not 
otherwise befriend your business." Some months later 
Marvell forwards an account, not of the £100, but of 
the legal expenses about the lighthouse. He wishes 
it were less, but hopes that the " vigorous resistance " 
will discourage the designers from proceeding farther. 
This it did not do. As a member of the bar, I find 
two or three of the items in this old-world Bill of Costs 
interesting : — 

To Mr. Scroggs to attend the Council, 

,, „ „ again for the same, 

Spent on Mr. Scroggs at dinner, 

To Mr. Scroggs again, 

Fees of the Council Table, 

Fee to Clerk of the Council, 

For dinner for Mr. Scroggs and wine after. 

To Mr. Cresset (the Solicitor), 

To Mr. Scroggs for a dinner, 

The barrister who was so frequently "refreshed" 
by Marvell lived to become " the infamous Lord Chief 
Justice Scroggs " of all school histories. 

A week before the prorogation of Parliament, which 
happened on the 19th of May 1662, Marvell went to 
Holland and remained there for nine months, for he 
did not return until the very end of March 1663, more 
than a month after the reassembling of the House. 

What took him there nobody knows. Writing to 
the Trinity House about the lighthouse business on 
the 8th of May 1662, Marvell says : — 

" But that which troubles me is that by the interest of 
some persons too potent for me to refuse, and who have a 
great direction and influence upon my counsels and fortune, 



£3 


6 





3 


6 







18 





3 








1 


10 





2 








1 








20 








1 









IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS lOl 

I am obliged to go beyond sea before I have perfected it (i.e. 
the lighthouse business). But first I do thereby make my 
Lord Carlisle (who is a member of the Privy Council and one 
of them to whom your business is referred) absolutely yours. 
And my journey is but into Holland, from whence I shall 
weekly correspond as if I were at London with all the rest of 
my friends, towards the affecting your business. Then I 
leave Col. Gilbey there, whose ability for business and 
affection to yours is such that I cannot be wanted though I 
am missing." 

It is plain from this that Lord Carlisle is one of the 
powerful persons referred to — but beyond this we 
cannot go. 

Whilst in Holland Marvell wrote both to the Trinity 
House an.d to the corporation on business matters. 

In March 1663 Marvell came back in a hurry, 
some complaints having been made in Hull about 
his absence. He begins his first letter after his 
return as follows : — 

" Being newly arrived in town and full of business, yet I 
could not neglect to give you notice that this day (2nd April 
1663) I have been in the House and found my place empty, 
thougli it seems, as I now hear, that some persons would have 
been so courteous as to have filled it for me." 

In none of these letters is any reference made to 
the debates in the House on the unhappy Bill of 
Uniformity, nor does any record of those discussions 
anywhere exist. The Savoy Conference proved a 
failure, and no lay reader of Baxter's account of it 
can profess wonder. Not a single point in difference 
was settled. In the meantime the restored Houses 
of Convocation, from which the Presbyterian members 
were excluded, had completed their revision of the 
Book of Common Prayer and presented it to 
Parliament. 



102 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

In considering the Bill for Uniformity, the House 
of Lords, where Presbyterianism was powerfully repre- 
sented, showed more regard for those "tender con- 
sciences " to which the king (by the new Prayer Book 
called for the first time "our most religious King") 
had referred in his Breda Declaration than did the 
House of Commons. " The Book, the whole Book, and 
nothing but the Book " was, in effect, the cry of the 
lower House, and on the 19th of May, ten days after 
Marvell had left for the Continent, the Act of Uni- 
formity became law, and by the 24th of August 1662 
all beneficed ministers and schoolmasters had to make 
the celebrated subscription and profession, or go out 
into the wilderness. 

There has always been a dispute as to the physical 
possibility of perusing the compilation in question 
before the day fixed by the Statute. The Book was 
advertised for sale in London on the 6th of August, 
but how many copies were actually available on that 
day is not known. 

The Dean and Chapter of Peterborough did not get 
their copies until the 17th of August. When the new 
folios reached the lonely parsonages of Cumberland 
and Durham — who would care to say ? The Act 
required a verbal avowal of "unfeigned assent and 
consent to all and everything contained and prescribed 
in and by the Book of Common Prayer, and adminis- 
trations of the Sacraments and other rites and cere- 
monies of the Church according to the iise of the 
Church of England, together with the Psalter, and the 
form of manner of making, ordaining, and consecrating 
Bishops, Priests, and Deacons" to be made after the 
service upon " some Lord's day " before the Feast of 
St. Bartholomew, i.e. the 2J:th of August 1662. The 
Act also required subscription within the same time- 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 103 

limit to a declaration of (inter alia) uniformity to the 
Liturgy of the Church of England " as it is now by 
law established." 

That this haste was indecent no layman is likely to 
dispute, but that it wrought practical wrong is doubtful. 
The Vicar of Bray needed no time to read his new Folio 
to enable him to make whatever avowal concerning 
it the law demanded ; and as for signing the declara- 
tion, all he required for that purpose was pen and ink. 
Neither had the incumbent, who was a good church- 
man at heart, any doubts to settle. He rejoiced to 
know that his side was once more uppermost, and that 
it would be no longer necessary for him, in order to 
retain his living, to pretend to tolerate a Presbyterian, 
or to submit to read in his church the Directory of 
Public Worship. Convocation had approved the new 
Prayer Book, which was in substance the old one, and 
what more did any churchman require ? As for the 
Presbyterians and others who were in possession of 
livings, tlie failure of the Savoy Conference must have 
made it plain to them that the Church of England had 
not allowed the king to keep his word, that compro- 
mise and comprehension had failed, and that if they 
were to remain where they were, it could only be on 
terms of completely severing themselves from all other 
Protestant bodies in the world, and becoming thorough 
Episcopalians. No Presbyterian of any eminence was 
prepared to make the statutory avowal. Painful as it 
always must be to give up any good thing by a fixed 
date, it is hard to see what advantage would have 
accrued from delay. 

When the day came, some two thousand parsons 
were turned out of the Church of England. Among 
them were included many of the most devout and 
some of the most learned of our divines. Their 



104 ANDREW MAKVELL [chap. 

"coming in "had been irregular, their ''going out" 
was painful. 

Save so far as it turned these men out, the Act was 
a failure. It did not procure that uniformity in the 
p\iblic worship of God which it declared was so desir- 
able ; it prevented no scandal ; it arrested no decay ; 
it allayed no distemper, and it certainly did not settle 
the peace of the Church. Inside the Church the 
bishops were supine, the parochial clergy indifferent, 
and the worshippers, if such a name can properly be 
bestowed upon the congregations, were grossly irreve- 
rent. Nor was any improvement in the conduct of 
the Church service noticeable until after the Eevolu- 
tion, and when legislation had conceded a somewhat 
shabby measure of toleration to those who by that 
time had become rigid, traditional, and hereditary 
dissenters. Then indeed some attempts began to be 
made to secure a real uniformity of ritual in the public 
worship of the Church of England.^ How far success 
has rewarded these exertions it is not for me to say. 

Marvell did not remain long at home after his 
return from Holland. A strange adventure lay before 
him. He thus introduces it in a letter dated 20th 
June 1663 : — 

" Gentlemen, my very worthy Friends, — The relation 
I have to your affairs, and the intimacy of that affection I ow 
you, do both incline and oblige me to communicate to yon, 
that there is a probability I may very shortly have occasion 
to go beyond sea ; for my Lord of Carlisle being chosen by 
his Majesty, Embassadour Extraordinary to Muscovy, Sweden, 
and Denmarke, hath used his power, which ought to be very 

1 Mr. Gladstone's testimony is that no real improvement was 
effected until within the period of his own memory. ' Our 
services were probably without a parallel in the world for their 
debasement.' (See Gleanings, vi. p. 119.) 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 105 

great with me, to make me goe along with him Secretary 
in those embassages. It is no new thing for Members of our 
House to be dispens'd with for the service of the King and 
Nation in f orain parts. And you may be sure that I will not 
stirre without sx^eciall leave of the House ; that so you may 
be freed from any possibility of being importuned or tempted 
to make any other choice, in my absence. However, I can 
not but advise also with you, desiring to take your assent 
along with me, so much esteeme I have both of your prudence 
and friendship. The time allotted for the embassy is not 
much above a yeare : probably it may not be much less 
betwixt our adjournment and next meeting ; and, however, 
you have Colonell Gilby, to whom my presence can make 
litle addition, so that if I cannot decline this voyage, I shall 
have the comfort to believe, that, all things considered, you 
cannot thereby receive any disservice. I shall hope to receive 
herein your speedy answer. . . ." 

What was the " power " Lord Carlisle had over 
Marvell is not now discoverable, but the tie, whatever 
it may have been, was evidently a close one. 

A month after this letter Marvell started on his 
way. 

"Gentlemen, my very worthy Friends, — Being this 
day taking barge for Gravesend, there to embark for Archangel, 
so to Muscow, thence for Sweden, and last of all Denmarke ; 
all of which I hope, by God's blessing, to finish within twelve 
moneths time : I do hereby, with my last and seriousest 
thoughts, salute jow, rendring you all hearty thanks for your 
great kindnesse and friendship to me upon all occasions, and 
ardently beseeching God to keep you all in His gracious pro- 
tection, to your own honour, and the welfare and flourishing 
of your Corporation, to which I am and shall ever continue a 
most affectionate and devoted servant. I undertake this 
voyage with the order and good liking of his Majesty, and by 
leave given me from the House and enterd in the Journal ; 
and having received moreover your approbation, I go therefore 
with more ease and satisfaction of mind, and augui"ate to 
myselfe the happier successe in all my proceedings. . . ." 



106 ANDREW MAEVELL [chap. 

■» 

It was Marvell's good fortune to be in Lord Carlisle's 
frigate which made the voyage to Archangel in less 
than a month, sailing from Gravesend on the 22nd of 
July and arriving at the bar of Archangel on the 19th 
of August. The companion frigate took seven weeks 
to compass the same distance. 

Nothing of any importance attaches to this Eussian 
embassy. It cost a great deal of money, took up a 
great deal of time, exposed the ambassador and his 
suite to much rudeness and discomfort, and failed to 
effect its main object, which was to secure a renewal 
of the privileges formerly enjoyed in Muscovy by 
British merchants. 

One of the attendants upon the ambassador made a 
small book out of his travels, which did not get printed 
till 1669, when it attracted little notice. Mr. Grosart 
was the first of Marvell's many biographers to discover 
the existence of this narrative.^ He found it in the 
first instance, to use his own language, " in one of good 
trusty John Harris' folios of Travels and Voyayes^' 
(two vols, folio, 1705) ; but later on he made the 
sad discovery that this " good trusty John Harris " 
had uplifted what he called his " true and particular 
account " from the book of 1669 without any acknow- 
ledgment. " For ways that are dark " the old com- 
piler of travels was not easily excelled, but why should 
Mr. Grosart have gone out of his way to call an 



1 There is a copy in the library of the Athenxum, London : 
"A Relation of Three Embassies from his sacred Majestic 
Charles ii. to the Great Duke of Muscovie, the King of 
Sweden, and the King of Denmark. Performed by the Right 
Ho^^ the Earle of Carlisle hi the Years IGG'S and 1664. Written 
by an Attendant on the Embassies, and published with his 
Lordship's approbation. London. Printed for John Starkie 
at the Miter in Fleet Street, near Temple Barr, 1069." 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 107 

eigliteenth-century book-maker, about Avhoni he evi- 
dently knew nothing, " good and trusty " ? Harris was 
never either the one or the other, and died a pauper ! 
A journey to Moscow in 1663-64 was no joke. 
Lord Carlisle, who was accompanied by his wife and 
eldest son, although ready to start from Archangel by 
the end of September, was doomed to spend both the 
5th of November and Christmas Day in the gloomy town 
of Vologda, which they had reached, travelling by 
water, on the 17th of October. Some of this time was 
spent in quarrelling as to who was to supply the sledges 
that were required to convey the ambassador and all his 
impedimenta along the now ice-bound roads to Moscow. 
It was one of Marvell's many duties to remonstrate 
with the authorities for their cruel and disrespectful 
indifference; he did so with great freedom, but with 
no effect, and at last the ambassador was obliged to 
hire two hundred sledges at his own charges. Sixty 
he sent on ahead, following with one hundred and 
forty on the 15th of January 1664. It was an in- 
tensely cold journey, and the accommodation at night, 
with one happy exception, proved quite infamous. On 
the 3rd of February Lord Carlisle and his cortege found 
themselves five versts from Moscow. The 5th of 
February was fixed for their entry into the city in all 
their finery. They were ready on the morning of that 
day, awaiting the arrival of the Tsar's escort, but it 
never came. Lord Carlisle had sent his cooks on to 
Moscow to prepare the dinner he expected to eat in 
his city-quarters. Nightfall approached, and it was 
not till '' half an hour before night " that the belated 
messengers arrived, full of excuses. The ambassador 
was hungry, cold, and furious, nor did his anger abate 
when told he was not to be allowed to enter Moscow 
that night, as the Tsar and his ladies were very 



108 ANDKEW MARVELL [chap. 

anxious to enjoy the spectacle. The return of the 
cooks from Moscow and the preparation of dinner, 
though a mitigation, was no cure for wounded pride, 
and Lord Carlisle, calling Marvell to his side, and with 
his assistance, concocted a letter in Latin to the Tsar, 
complaining bitterly of their ill-treatment inter fumosi 
gurgiistii sonles et angxistkts sine cibo aut pota, and going 
so far as to assert that had anything of the kind 
happened in England to a foreign ambassador, the 
King of England would never have rested until the 
offence had been atoned for with the blood of the 
criminals. When, some forty years afterwards, Peter 
the Great asked Queen Anne to chop off the heads of 
the rude men who had arrested his ambassador for 
debt, he had, perhaps, Marvell's letter before him. 

On the 6th of February Lord Carlisle and his suite 
made their public entry into Moscow ; but so long a 
time was occupied over the few versts they had to 
travel, that it was dusk before the Kremlin was reached. 

The formal reception of the ambassador was on the 
11th of February. Marvell was in the ambassador's 
sledge and carried his credentials upon a yard of red 
damask. The titles of the Russian Potentate would, 
if printed here, fill half a page. All the Eussias, 
Great, Little, and White, emperies more than one, 
dukedoms by the dozen, territories, countries, and 
dominions — not all easy to identify on the map, and 
very hard to pronounce — were read out in a loud voice 
by Marvell. At the end of them came the homely title 
of the Earl and his offices, " his Majesty's Lieutenant 
in the Counties of Cumberland and Westmorland." 

The letters read and delivered, the Tsar and his 
Boyars rose in their places simultaneously, and their 
tissue vests made so strange, loud, and unexpected a 
noise as to provoke the ever too easily moved risibility 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 109 

of tlie Englishmen.^ When Marvell and the rest of 
them had ceased from giggling, the Tsar inquired after 
the health of the king, but the distance between his 
Imperial Majesty and Lord Carlisle being too great for 
the question to carry, it had to be repeated by those 
who were nearer the ambassador, who gravely replied 
tha,t when he last saw his master, namely on the 20th 
of July then last past, he was perfectly well. To the 
same question as to the health of " the desolate widow 
of Charles the First," Carlisle returned the same 
cautious answer. He then read a very long speech in 
English, which his interpreter turned into Russian. 
The same oration was rendered into Latin by Marvell, 
and presented. Over Marvell's Latin trouble arose, 
for the Russians were bent on taking and giving 
offence. Marvell had styled the Tsar Illustris'simus 
when he ought, so it was alleged, to have called him 
Serenissimus. Marvell was not a schoolmaster's son, an 
old scholar of Trinity, and Milton's assistant as Latin 
Secretary for nothing. He prepared a reply which, as 
it does not lack humour, has a distinct literary flavour, 
and is all that came of the embassy, may here be given 
at length : — 

"I reply, saith he, that I sent no such paper into the Em- 
bassy-office, but upon the desire of his Tzarskoy Majesty's 
Councellor Evan Offonassy Pronchissof, I delivered it to him, 
not being a paper of State, nor written in the English Lan- 
guage wherein I treat, nor put into the hands of the near 
Boyars and Councellors of his Tzarskoy majesty, nor sub- 
scribed by my self, nor translated into Russe by my Interpreter, 
but only as a piece of curiosity, which is now restored me, and I 

1"! have mentioned the dignity of his manners. . . . He 
was at his very best on occasion of Durbars, investitures, and 
the like. ... It irritated him to see men giggling or jeering 
instead of acting their parts properly." — Life of Lord Dufferin, 
vol. ii. p. 317. 



110 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

am possessed of it ; so that herein his Tzarskoy majestie's near 
Boyars and Conncelloi's are doubtless ill grounded. But again I 
say concerning the value of the words I lliislrissbnus and Serenis- 
simus compared together, seeing we must here from affaires of 
State, fall into Grammatical contests concerning the Latin 
tongue ; that the word Serenus signifieth nothing but still and 
calm ; and, therefore, though of late times adopted into the 
Titles of great Princes by reason of that benigne tranquility 
which properly dwells in the majestick countenance of great 
Princes, and that venerable stillness of all the Attendants 
that surround them, of which I have seen an excellent ex- 
ample when I was in the presence of his Tzarskoy majesty, 
yet is more properly used concerning the calmness of the 
weather, or season. So that even the night is elegantly 
called Serena l>y the best Authors, Cicero in Arato 12, Lu- 
cretius i. 1. 29. ' Serena nox ' ; and upon perusing again 
what I have writ in this papei', I finde that I have out of 
the customariness of that expression my self near the begin- 
ning said, And that most serene night, &c. Whereas on 
the contrary Illustris in its proper derivation and signifi- 
cation expresseth that which is all resplendent, lightsome, 
and glorious, as well without as within, and that not with 
a secondary but with a primitive and original light. For 
if the Sun be, as he is, the first fountain of light, and Poets 
in their expressions (as is well known) are higher by much 
than those that write in Prose, what else is it when Ovid 
in the 2. of the Metamorphoses saith of Phoebus speaking 
with Phaethou, Qui terque quaterque concutiens Illuslre caput, 
and the Latin Orators, as Pliny, Ep. 139, when they would 
say the highest thing that can be exprest upon any subject, 
word it thus. Nihil lllustrius dicere possum. So that hereby 
may appear to his Tzarskoy Majestie's near Boyars and 
Counsellors what diminution there is to his Tzarskoy 
Majesty (which farr be it from my thoughts) if I appro- 
priate Sereriissimus to my Master and Illustrissimus to 
Him than which 7iihil did potest lllustrius. But because 
this was in the time of the purity of the Latin tongue, when 
the word Serenus was never used in the Title of any Prince 
or Person, I shall go on to deale with the utmost candor, 
forasmuch as in this Nation the nicety of that most eloquent 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 111 

language is not so perfectly understood, which gives occasion 
to these mistakes. I confess therefore that indeed in the 
declination of the Latin tongue, and when there scarce could 
be found out words enough to supply the modern ambition of 
Titles, Serenissimus as several other words hath grown in 
fashion for a compellation of lesser as well as greater Princes, 
and yet befits both the one and the other. So there is 
Serenissima Respiihlica Veneta, Serenitates Electorice, Sereni- 
tates Regice, even as the word Highness or Cehitudo befits a 
Duke, a Prince, a King, or an Emperour, adjoyning to it the 
respective quality, and so the word Illustris. But suppose 
it were by modern use (which I deny) depressed from the 
undoubted superiority that it had of Serenus in the purest 
antiquity, yet being added in the transcendent degree to the 
word Emperour, the highest denomination that a Prince is 
capable of, it becomes of the same value. So that to interpret 
Illustrissiniua unto diminution is to find apiositive in a supei'- 
lative, and in the most orient light to seek for darkness. And 
I would, seeing the near Boyars and Counsellors of his 
Tzarskoy Majesty are pleased to mention the Title given to 
his Tzarskoy JNIajesty by his Cesarian Majesty, gladly be 
satisfied by them, whether ever any Cesai-ian Majesty writ 
formerly hither in High-Dutch, and whether then they styled 
his Tzarskoy Majesty Durchluchtigste which is the same with 
Illnstrissimus, and which I believe the Caesar hath kept for 
Himself. But to cut short, his Royal Majesty hath used the 
word to his Tzarskoy Majesty in his Letter, not out of imitation 
of others, although even in the Dutch Letter to his Tzarskoy 
Majesty of 16 June 1663, 1 finde Durchlauchtigste the same (as 
I said) with Illustrissimiis, but out of the constant use of his 
own Court, further joyning before it Most High, Most Potent, 
and adding after it Great Lord Emperour, which is an higher 
Title than any Prince in the World gives his Tzarskoy Majesty, 
and as high a Title of honour as can be given to any thing 
under the Divinity. For the King my Master who possesses as 
considerable Dominions, and by as high and self-dependent a 
right as any Prince in the Universe, yet contenting Himself 
with the easiest Titles, and satisfying Himself in the essence 
of things, doth most willingly give to other Princes the Titles 



112 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

which are appropriated to them, but to tlie Tzarskoy Majesties 
of Russia his Royal Ancestors, and to his jjresent Tzarskoy 
]\Iajesty his Royal Majesty himself, have usually and do 
gladly pay Titles even to superfluity out of meer kindness. 
And upon that reason He added the word most Illustrious, 
and so did I use it in the Latin of my speech. Yet, that You 
may find I did not out of any criticisme of honor, but for dis- 
tinction sake use it as I did. You may see in one place of the 
same speech Serenitas, speaking of his Tzarskoy Majesty : 
and I would have used Sereiiissimus an hundred times con- 
cerning his Tzarskoy Majesty, had I thought it would have 
pleased Ilim better. And I dare promise You that his 
Majesty will upon the first information from me stile him 
Serenissimus, audi (notwithstanding what I have said) shall 
make little difficulty of altering the word in that speech, and 
of delivering it so to You, with that protestation that I have 
not in using that word Illustj-isfiimiis erred nor used any 
diminution (which God forbid) to his Tzarskoy Majesty, but 
on the contrary after the example of the King my Master 
intended and shewed him all possible honor. And so God 
grant all happiness to His most high, most Potent, most 
Illustrious, and most Serene Tzarskoy Majesty, and that the 
friendship may daily increase betwixt His said Majesty and 
his most Serene Majesty my Master." 

On the 19th of February the Tsar invited Lord 
Carlisle and his suite to a dinner, which, beginning 
at two o'clock, lasted till eleven, when it was pre- 
maturely broken up by the Tsar's nose beginning to 
bleed. Five hundred dishes Avere served, but there 
were no napkins, and the table-cloths only just covered 
the boards. There were Spanish wines, white and red 
mead, Puaz and strong waters. The English ambas- 
sador was not properly placed at table, not being 
anywhere near the Tsar, and his faithful suite shared 
his resentment. Time went on, but no diplomatic 
progress was made. The Tsar would not renew the 
privileges of the British merchants; Easter was spent 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 113 

in Moscow, May also — and still nothing was done. 
Carlisle, in a huff, determined to go away, and, some- 
what to the distress of his followers, refused to accept 
the costly sables sent by the Tzar, not only to the 
ambassador. Lady Carlisle, and Lord Morpeth, but to 
the secretaries and others. The Tzar thereupon 
returned the plate which our king had sent him, 
which plate Lord Carlisle seems to have appropriated, 
no doubt with diplomatic correctness, as his perquisite 
in lieu of the sables ; but the suite got nothing. 

The embassy left Moscow on the 24th of June for 
Novgorod and Riga, and after visiting Stockholm and 
Copenhagen, Lord Carlisle and Marvell reached Lon- 
don on the 30th of January 1665. 

During Marvell's absence war had been declared 
with the Dutch. It was never difficult to go to war 
with the Dutch. The king was always in want of 
money, and as no proper check existed over war sup- 
plies, he took what he wanted out of them. The 
merchants on 'Change desired war, saying that the 
trade of the world was too little for both England 
and Holland, and that one or the other "must down." 
The English manufacturers, who felt the sting of their 
Dutch competitors, were always in favour of war. 
Then the growing insolence of the Dutch in the 
Indies was not to be borne. Stories were circulated 
how the Hollanders had proclaimed themselves " Lords 
of the Southern Seas," and meant to deny English 
ships the right of entry in that quarter of the globe. 
A baronet called on Pepys and pulled out of his 
pocket letters from the East Indies, full of sad tales 
of Englishmen having been actually thrashed inside 
their own factory at Surat by swaggering Dutchmen, 
who had insulted the flag of St. George, and swore 
they were going to be the masters " out there." Pepys, 



114 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

who knew a little about the state of the royal navy, 
listened sorrowfully and was content to hope that the 
war would not come until '^ we are more ready for it." 

In the House of Commons the prudent men were 
against the war, and were at once accused of being in 
the pay of the Dutch. The king's friends were all 
for the war, and nobody doubted that some of the 
money voted for it would find its way into their 
pockets, or at all events that pensions would reward 
their fidelity. A third group who favoured the war 
were supposed to do so because their disloyalty and 
fanaticism always disposed them to trouble the waters 
in which they wished to fish. 

The war began in November 1664, and on the 
24th of that month the king opened Parliament and 
demanded money. He got it. Clarendon describes 
how Sir Robert Paston from Norfolk^ a back-bench 
man, '* who was no frequent speaker, but delivered 
what he had a mind to say very clearly," stood up 
and proposed a grant of two and a half million pounds, 
to be spread over three years. So huge a sum took 
the House by surprise. Nobody spoke ; " they sat in 
amazement." Somebody at last found his voice and 
moved a much smaller sum, but no one seconded him. 
Sir Robert Paston ultimately found supporters, " no 
man who had any relation to the Court speaking a 
word." The Speaker put Sir Robert Paston's motion 
as the question, " and the affirmative made a good 
sound, and very few gave their negative aloud." But 
Clarendon adds, " it was notorious very many sat 
silent." 

The war was not in its early stages unpopular, 
being for the control of the sea, for the right of search, 
for the fishing trade, for mastery of the "gorgeous 
East. " The Admiralty had been busy, and a hundred 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 115 

frigates, well gunned, were ready for the blue water 
by February 1665. The Duke of York, who took the 
command, was a keen sailor, though his unhappy 
notions as to patronage, and its exercise, were fatal to 
an efficient service. On the 3rd of Ji;ne the duke had 
his one victory ; it was off the roadstead of Harwich, 
and the roar of his artillery was heard in Westminster. 
It was a fierce fight ; the king's great friend, Charles 
Berkeley, just made a peer and about to be made a 
duke, Lord Muskerry and young Richard Boyle, all on 
the duke's ship the Royal Charles, were killed by one 
shot, their blood and brains flying in the duke's face. 
The Earls of Marlborough and Portland were killed. 
The gallant Lawsou, who rose from the ranks in 
Cromwell's time, an Anabaptist and a Republican, but 
still in high command, received on board his ship, the 
Royal Oak; a fatal wound. On the other side the 
Dutch admiral, Opdam, was blown into the air with 
his ship and crew. The Dutch fleet was scattered, and 
fled, after a loss estimated at twenty-four ships and 
eight thousand men killed and wounded; England 
lost no ship and but six hundred men. 

The victory was not followed up. Some say the 
duke lost nerve. Tromp was allowed to lead a great 
part of the fleet away in safety, and when the great 
De Euyter was recalled from the West Indies he was 
soon able to assume the command of a formidable 
number of fighting craft. 

In less than ten days after this great engagement 
the plague appeared in London, a terrible and a 
solemnising affliction, lasting the rest of the year. It 
was at its worst in September, when in one week more 
than seven thousand died of it. The total number 
of its dead is estimated at sixty-eight thousand five 
hundred and ninety-six. 



116 AISTDREW MARVELL [chap. 

On account of the plague Parliament was summoned 
to meet at Oxford in October 1665. 

Mai'vell must have reached Oxford in good time, 
for the Admission Book of the Bodleian records his 
visit to the library on the last day of September. 
His first letter from Oxford is dated 15th October, 
and in it he tells the corporation that the House, 
'* upon His Majesty's representation of the necessity 
of further supplies in reference to the Dutch War and 
probability of the French embracing their interests, 
hath voted the King £1,250,000 additional to be 
levied in two years." The king, who was the frankest 
of mortals in speech, though false as Belial in action, 
told the House that he had already spent all the 
money previously voted and must have more, especi- 
ally if France was to prefer the friendship of Holland 
to his. Amidst loud acclamations the money was 
voted. The French ambassadors, who were in Oxford, 
saw for themselves the temper of Parliament. 

Notwithstanding the terrible plight of the capital, 
Oxford was gaiety itself. The king was accompanied 
by his consort, who then was hopeful of an heir, and 
also by Lady Castlemaine and Miss Stewart. Lady 
Castlemaine did not escape the shaft of University wit, 
for a stinging couplet was set up during the night on 
her door, for the discovery of the authorship of which 
a reward of £1000 was offered. It may very well 
have been Marvell's.^ 

The Duke of Monmouth gave a ball to the queen 
and her ladies, where, after the queen's retirement, 
" Mrs. Stewart was extraordinary merry," and sang 
" French songs with great skill." ^ 



1 Hist. MSS. Com., Portland Papers, vol. iii. p. 296. 

2 See above, vol. iii. p. 294. 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 117 

Ten Acts of Parliament received the royal assent at 
Oxford, of Avhich but one is still remembered in certain 
quarters — the Five Mile Act, which Marvell briefly 
describes as an Act " for debarring ejected Noncon- 
formists from living in or near Corporations (where 
they had formerly pursued their callings), unless 
taking the new Oath and Declaration." Parliament 
was prorogued at the end of October. 

Another visitation of Providence was soon to befall 
the capita,l. On Sunday morning, the 2nd of Sep- 
tember, Pepys was aroused by one of his maid-servants 
at 3 A.M. to look at a fire. He could not make out 
much about it and went to bed again, but when he rose 
at seven o'clock it was still burning, so he left his house 
and made his way to the Tower, from whence he saw 
London Bridge aflame, and describes how the poor 
pigeons, loth to leave their homes, fluttered about the 
balconies, until with singed wings they fell into the 
flames. After gazing his fill he went to Whitehall 
and had an interview with the king, who at once 
ordered his barge and proceeded downstream to his 
burning City, and to the assistance of a distracted 
Lord Mayor. 

The fire raged four days, and made an end of 
old London, a picturesque and even beautiful City. 
St. Paul's, both the church and the school, the Royal 
Exchange, Ludgate, Pleet Street as far as the Inner 
Temple, were by the 7tli of the month smoking ruins. 
Pour hundred streets, eighty -nine churches (just a 
church an hour, so the curious noted), warehouses 
unnumbered with all their varied contents, whole 
editions of books, valuable and the reverse of valu- 
able, were wiped out of existence. Kents to an 
enormous amount ceased to be represented any longer 
by the houses that paid them. How was the king 



118 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

to get his chimney-money ? How were merchants to 
meet their obligations ? The parsons on Sunday, the 
9th of September, ought to have had no difficulty in 
finding texts for their sermons. Pepys went to church 
twice, but without edification, and certainly Dean 
Harding, whom he heard complaining in the evening 
*' that the City had been reduced from a folio to a duo 
decimo," hardly rose to the dignity of the occasion. 

Strange to say, not a life was actually lost in the 
fire,^ though some old Londoners (among them Edmund 
Calamy's grandfather) died of grief, and others (and 
among them Shirley the dramatist and his wife) from 
exposure and exhaustion. One hysterical foreigner, 
who insisted that he lit the flame, was executed, though 
no sensible man believed what he said. It was long 
the boast of the merchants of London that no one of 
their number "broke" in consequence of the great fire. 

Unhappily the belief was widespread, as that " tall 
bully," the monument, long testified, that the fire was 
the work of the Roman Catholics, and aliens, suspected 
of belonging to our old religion, found it dangerous 
to walk the streets whilst the embers still smoked, 
which they continued to do for six months. 

The meeting of Parliament was a little delayed in 
consequence of this national disaster, and when it did 
meet at the end of the month, Marvell reports the 
appointment of two Committees, one " about the Fire 
of London," and the other " to receive informations of 
the insolence of the Popish priests and Jesuits, and 
of the increase of Popery." The latter Committee 
almost at once reported to the House, to quote from 
Marvell's letter of the 27th of October, "that his 
Majesty be desired to issue out his proclamation that 
all Popish priests and Jesuits, except such as not being 
1 Sir Walter Besant doubted this. See his London. 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 119 

uatural-born subjects, or belong to the Queen Mother 
and Queen Consort, be banished in thirty days or else 
the law be executed upon them, that all Justices of 
Peace and officers concerned put the laws in execution 
against Papists and suspected Papists in order to their 
execution, and that all officers, civil or military, not 
taking the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance within 
twenty days be displaced." 

In a very real sense the great fire of London con- 
tinued to smoke for many a weary year, and to fill 
the air with black suspicions and civil discord. 

Parliament had not sat long before it was discovered 
that a change had taken place in its temper and spirit. 
The plague and the fire had contributed to this change. 
The London clergy had not exhibited great devotion 
during the former affliction. Many of the incum- 
bents deserted their flocks, and their empty pulpits 
had been filled by zealots, who preached " Woe unto 
Jerusalem." The profligacy of the Court, and the 
general decay of manners, when added to the severity 
of the legislation against the Nonconformists, gave 
the ejected clergy opportunities for a renewal of their 
spiritual ministrations, and as usual their labours, j^ro 
salute an hnarum, aroused political dissatisfaction. Some 
of the more outrageous supporters of the royal pre- 
rogative, the renegade May among them, professed to 
see in the fire a punishment upon the spirit of freedom, 
for which the City had once been famous, and urged 
the king not to suffer it to be rebuilt again " to be 
a bit in his mouth and a bridle upon his neck, but 
to keep it all open," and that his troops might enter 
whenever he thought necessary, " there being no other 
way to govern that rude multitude but by force." 

Rabid nonsense of this kind had no weight with the 
king, who never showed his native good sense more 



120 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

conspicuously than in the pains he took over the 
rebuilding of London ; but none the less it had its 
effect in getting rid once and for ever of that spirit 
of excessive (besotted is Hallam's word) loyalty which 
had characterised the Restoration. 

The king, of course, wanted money, nor was Parlia- 
ment disposed to refuse it, we being still at war with 
Holland; but to the horror of that elderly pedant, 
Lord Clarendon, the Commons passed a Bill ap]3ointing 
a commission of members of both Houses " to inspect" — 
I am now quoting Marvell — " and examine thoroughly 
the former expense of the £2,800,000, of the £1,250,000 
of the Militia money, of the prize goods, etc." In an 
earlier letter Marvell attributes the new temper of 
Parliament, " not to any want of ardour to supply the 
public necessities, but out of our House's sense also 
of the burden to be laid upon the subject." Clarendon 
was so alarmed that he advised a dissolution. Charles 
was alarmed, too, knowing well that both Carteret, the 
Treasurer of the Navy, and Lord Ashley, the Treasurer 
of the Prize Money, issued out many sums upon the 
king's warrant, for which no accounts could be pro- 
duced, but he was still more frightened of a new 
Parliament. In the present Parliament he had, so 
Clarendon admits, '' a hundred members of his own 
menial servants and their near relations." The bishops 
were also against a dissolution, dreading the return of 
Presbyterian members, so Clarendon's advice was not 
followed, and the king very reluctantly consented to 
the commission, about which Pepys has so much to 
say. It did not get appointed at once, but when 
it did Pepys rejoices greatly that its secretary, 
Mr. Jessopp, was " an old fashioned Cromwell man " ; 
in other words, both honest and efficient. 

The shrewd Secretary of the Kavy Office here puts 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 121 

his finger on tlie real plague-spot of the Restoration. 
Our Puritan historians write rather loosely about 
"the floodgates of dissipation," etc., having been flung 
open by that event as if it had wrought a sudden 
change in human nature. Mr. Pepys, whose frank 
Diary begins during the Protectorate, underwent no 
such change. He was just the same sinner under 
Cromwell as he was under Charles. Sober, grave 
divines may be found deploring the growing pro- 
fligacy of the times long before the 29th of May 
16(30. An era of extravagance was evidently to be 
expected. Ko doubt the king's return assisted it. 
No country could be anything but the worse for 
having Charles the Second as its " most religious 
King." The Restoration of the Stuarts was the best 
" excuse for a glass " ever offered to an Englishman. 
He availed himself of it with even more than his accus- 
tomed freedom. But it cannot be said that the king's 
debauchery was ever approved of even in London. 
Both the mercurial Pepys and the grave Evelyn alike 
deplore it. The misfortune clearly attributable to 
the king's return was the substitution of a corrupt, 
inefficient, and unpatriotic administration for the old- 
fashioned servants of the public whom Cromwell had 
gathered round him. 

Parliament was busy with new taxes. In November 
1666 Marvell writes : — 

" The Committee has prepai-ed these votes. All persons 
shall pay one shilling per poll, all aliens two, all Noncon- 
formists and papists two, all servants one shilling in the 
pound of their wages, all personal estates shall pay for so 
much as is not already taxed by the land-tax, after twenty 
shillings in the hundred. Cattle, corn, and household furni- 
ture shall be excepted, and all such stock-in-trade as is 
already taxed by the land-tax, but the rest to be liable." 



122 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

Stringent work ! Later on we read : — 

" Three shillings in the pound for all offices and public 
employments, except military ; lawyers and physicians pro- 
portionate to their practice." 

Here is the income-tax long before Mr. Pitt. 

The House of Lords, trembling on the verge of a 
breach of privilege, altered this Poll Bill. Marvell 
writes in January 1667 : — 

" We have not advanced much this week ; the alterations 
of the Lords upon the Poll Bill have kept us busy. We 
have disagreed in most. Aliens we adhere to pay double. 
Nonconformists we agree with them not to pay double (126 
to 91), to allow no exemptions from patents to free from 
paying, we adhere ; and we also rejected a long clause where- 
by they as well as the Commoners pretend distinctly to give 
to the King, and to-day we send up our reasons." 

The Lords agreed, and the Bill passed. 

Ireland supplied a very stormy measure. I am 
afraid Marvell was on the wrong side, but owing to 
his reserve I am not sure. An Irish Cattle Bill was a 
measure very popular in the House of Commons, its 
object being to prevent Ireland from sending over 
live beasts to be fattened, killed, and consumed in 
England. You can read all about it in Clarendon's 
Life (vol. iii. pp. 704-720, 739), and think you are 
reading about Canadian cattle to-day. The breeders 
(in a majority) were on one side, and the owners 
of pasture-land on the other. The breeders said the 
Irish cattle were bred in Ireland for nothing and 
transported for little, that they undersold the English- 
bred cattle, and consequently "the breed of Cattle 
in the Kingdom was totally given over," and rents 
fell. Other members contended in their places " that 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 123 

their countries had no land bad enough to breed, 
and that their traffic consisted in buying lean cattle 
and making them fat, and upon this they paid their 
rent." Nobody, except the king, gave a thought to 
Ireland. He, in this not unworthy of his great Tudor 
predecessor, Henry the Eighth, declared he was King 
of Ireland no less than of England, and would do 
nothing to injure one portion of his dominions for the 
benefit of another. But as usual he gave way, being 
in great straits for money. The House of Lords was 
better disposed towards Ireland than the House of 
Commons, but they too yielded to selfish clamour, and 
the Bill, which had excited great fury, became law, 
and proved ineffective, owing (as was alleged) to that 
corruption which restrictions on trade seem to have 
the trick of breeding.^ 

It is always agreeable to be reminded that however 
large a part of our history is composed of the record 
of passion, greed, delusion, and stupidity, yet common- 
sense, the love of order and of justice (in matters of 
business), have usually been the predominant factors 
in our national life, despite priest, merchant, and 
party. 

Nowhere is this better illustrated than by two 
measures to which Marvell refers as Bills " for the 
prevention of lawsuits between landlord and tenant " 
and for "the Eebuilding of London." Both these 
Bills became law in February 1668, within five months 
of the great catastrophe that was their occasion. 
Two more sensible, well-planned, well-drawn, cour- 
ageous measures were never piloted through both 
Houses. King, Lords and Commons, all put their 

1 Mr. Goldwiu Smith says this was the first pitched battle 
between Protection and Free Trade in England. — The United 
Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 25. 



124 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

heads together to face a great emergency and to 
provide an immediate remedy. 

The Bill to prevent lawsuits is best appreciated if 
we read its preamble : — 

" Whereas the gi'eatest part of the houses in the City of 
London having been burnt by the dreadful and dismal fire 
which happened in September last, many of the Tenants, 
under-tenants, and late occupiers are liable unto suits and 
actions to compel them to repair and to rebuild the same, and 
to pay their rents as if the same had not been biu'nt, and are 
not relievable therefor in any ordinary course of law ; and 
great differences are likely to arise concerning the Repairs 
and rebuilding the said houses, and payment of rents which, 
if they should not be determined with speed and without 
charge, would much obstruct the rebuilding of the s'^ City. 
And for that it is just that everyone concerned should bear 
a proportionate share of this loss according to their several 
interests wherein in respect of the multitude of cases, 
varying in their circumstances, no certain general rule can 
be prescribed." 

After this recital it was enacted that the judges of 
the King's Bench and Common Pleas and the Barons of 
the Exchequer, or any three or more of them, should 
form a Court of E-ecord to hear and determine every 
possible dispute or difference arising out of the great 
fire, whether relating to liability to rej)air, and rebuild, 
or to pay rent, or for arrears of rent (other than 
arrears which had accrued due before the 1st of 
September) or otherwise howsoever. The proceedings 
were to be by summary process, sine fonna et figura 
jiidicii and without court fees. The judges were to be 
bound by no rules either of law or equity, and might 
call for what evidence they chose, including that of 
the interested parties, and try the case as it best could 
be tried. Their orders were to be final and not (save 
in a single excepted case) subject to any appeal. All 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 125 

persons in remainder and reversion were to be bound 
by these orders, although infants, married women, 
idiots, beyond seas, or under any other disability. 
A special power was given to order the surrender of 
existing leases, and to grant new ones for terms not 
exceeding forty years. The judges gave their services 
for nothing, and, for once, released from all their own 
trammels, set to work to do substantial justice between 
landlord and tenant, personalty and realty, the life 
interest and the remainder, covenantor and covenantee, 
after a fashion which excited the admiration and won 
the confidence of the whole City. The ordinary suitor, 
still left exposed to the pitfalls of the special pleader, 
the risks (owing to the exclusion of evidence) of a non- 
suit and the costly cumbersomeness of the Court of 
Chancery, must often have wished that the subject- 
matter of his litigation had perished in the flames of 
the great fire. 

This court sat in Clifford's Inn, and was usually 
presided over by Sir Matthew Hale, whose skill both 
as an arithmetician and an architect completed his 
fitness for so responsible a position. Within a year 
the work was done. 

The Act for rebuilding the City is an elaborate 
measure of more than forty clauses, and aimed at 
securing "the regularity, safety, convenieucy and 
beauty" of the new London that was to be. The 
buildings were classified according to their position 
and character, and had to maintain a prescribed level 
of quality. The materials to be employed were named. 
New streets were to be of certain widths, and so on. 
This is the Act that contains the first Betterment 
Clause : " And forasmuch as the Houses now remaining 
and to be rebuilt will receive more or less advantage 
in the value of the rents by the liberty of air and free 



126 ANDEEW MARVELL [chap. 

recourse for trade," it was enacted that a jury might 
be sworn to assess upon the owners and others in- 
terested of and in the said houses, such sum or sums of 
money with respect of their several interests " in con- 
sideration of such improvement and melioration as in 
reason and good conscience they shall think fit." 

It takes nothing short of a catastrophe to suspend 
in England, even for a few months, those rules of 
evidence that often make justice impossible, and those 
rights of landlords which for centuries have appro- 
priated public expenditure to private gain.^ 

The moneys required to pay for the land taken 
under the Act to widen streets and to accomplish the 
other authorised works were raised, as Marvell informs 
his constituents, by a tax of twelve pence on every 
chaldron of coal coming as far as Gravesend. Few 
taxes have had so useful and so harmless a life. 

All this time the Dutch War was going on, but the 
heart was out of it. Nothing in England is so popular 
as war, except the peace that comes after it. The 
king now wanted peace, and the merchants on 'Change 
had glutted their ire. In February 1667 the king 
told the Houses of Parliament that all " sober " men 
would be glad to see peace. Unluckily, it seems to 
have been assumed that we could have peace whenever 
we wanted it, and the fatal error was committed of at 
once " laying up " the first- and second-rate ships. It 

1 Being curious to discover whether no "property" man 
raised his voice against these measures, I turned to that true 
"home of lost causes," the Protests of the House of Lords ; and 
there, sure euougli, I found one solitary peer, Henry Carey, 
Earl of Dover, entering his dissent to both Bills — to the Judi- 
cature Bill because of the unlimited power given to the judges, 
to the Rebuilding Bill because of the exorbitant powers en- 
trusted to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen to give away or dispose 
of the property of landlords. 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 127 

thus came about that, whilst still at war, England had 
no fleet to put to sea. It did not at first seem likely 
that the overtures for peace would present much 
difficulty, when suddenly arose the question of Pole- 
roone. It is amazing how few Englishmen have ever 
heard of Poleroone, or even of the Banda Islands, of 
which group it is one. Indeed, a more insignificant 
speck in the ocean it would be hard to find. To dis- 
cover it on an atlas is no easy task. Yet, but for 
Poleroone, the Dutch would never have taken Sheerness, 
or broken the chain at Gillingham, or carried away with 
them to the Texel the proud vessel that had brought 
back Charles the Second to an excited population. 

Poleroone is a small nutmeg-growing island in the 
Indian Archipelago, not far from the eastern extremity 
of New Guinea. King James the First imagined he 
had some right to it, and, at any rate, Oliver Crom- 
well, when he made peace with the Dutch, made a 
great point of Poleroone. Have it he would for the 
East India Company. The Dutch objected, but gave 
way, and by an article in the treaty with Oliver 
bound themselves to give up Poleroone to the Com- 
pany. All, in fact, that they did do, was to cut down 
the nutmeg trees, and so make the island good for 
nothing for many a long year. Physical possession 
was never taken. Eor some unaccountable reason 
Charles, who had sold Oliver's Dunkirk to the French 
for half a million of money, stuck out for Poleroone. 
What Cromwell had taken he was not going to give 
up ! On the other hand, neither would the Dutch 
give up Poleroone. This dispute, about a barren 
island, delayed the settlement of the peace prelimin- 
aries ; but eventually the British plenipotentiaries did 
get out to Breda, in May 1667. Our sanguine king 
expected an immediate cessation of hostilities, and that 



128 ANDKEW MARVELL [chap. 

his unpreparedness would thus be huddled up. All of 
a sudden, at the beginning of June, De Ruyter led out 
his fleet, and with a fair wind behind him stood for 
the Thames. All is fair in war. England was caught 
napping. The doleful history reads like that of a 
sudden piratical onslaught, and reveals the fatal in- 
efficiency of the administration. Sheerness was prac- 
tically defenceless. " There were a Company or two 
of very good soldiers there under excellent officers, but 
the fortifications were -so weak and unfinished, and all 
other provisions so entirely wanting, that the Dutch 
Fleet no sooner approached within a distance but with 
their cannon they beat all the works flat and drove all 
the men from the ground, which, as soon as they had 
done with their Boats, they landed men and seemed 
resolved to fortify and keep it." ^ Capture of Sheerness 
by the Dutch ! No need of a halfpenny press to spread 
this news through a London still in ruins. What made 
matters worse, the sailors were more than half-mutinous, 
being paid with tickets not readily convertible into 
cash. Many of them actually deserted to the Dutch 
fleet, which made its leisurely way upstream, passing 
Upnor Castle, which had guns but no ammunition, till 
it was almost within reach of Chatham, where lay the 
royal navy. General Monk, who was the handy man 
of the period, and whose authority was always invoked 
when the king he had restored was in greater trouble 
than usual, had hastily collected what troops he 
could muster, and marched to protect Chatham ; but 
what were wanted were ships, not troops. The Dutch 
had no mind to land, and after firing three warships 
(the Royal James, the Royal Oak, and the London), and 
capturing the Royal Charles, " they thouglit they had 
done enough, and made use of the ebb to carry them 
1 Clareudou's Life, vol. iii. p. 790. 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 129 

back again." ^ These events occupied the tenth to the 
fifteenth of June, and for the impression they produced 
on Marvell's mind we are not dependent upon his 
restrained letters to his constituents, but can turn to 
his longest rhymed satire, which is believed to have 
been first printed, anonymously of course, as a broad- 
sheet in Augvist 1G67. 

This poem is called Tlie Last Instructions to a Painter 
about the Dutch Wars, 1G67. The title was derived 
from Waller's panegyric poem on the occasion of the 
Duke of York's victory over the Dutch on the 3rd of 
June 1665, Avhen Opdam, the Dutch admiral, was 
blown up with his ship.^ Sir John Denham, a brother 
satirist of Marvell's, and with as good an excuse for 
hating the Duke of York as this world affords, had 
seized upon the same idea and published four satiri- 
cal poems on these same Dutch Wars, entitled Direc- 
tions to a Painter (see Poems on Affairs of State, 1703, 
vol. i.). 

Marvell's satire, which runs to 900 lines, is essen- 
tially a House of Commons poem, and could only have 
been written by a member. It is intensely ''lobbyish" 
and " occasional." To understand its allusions, to ap- 
preciate its " pain-giving " capacity to the full, is now 
impossible. Still, the reader of Clarendon's Life, 
Pepys's Diary, and Burnet's History, to name only popu- 
lar books, will have no difficulty in entering into the 
spirit of the performance. As a poem it is rough in 
execution, careless, breathless. A rugged style was then 
in voarue. Even Milton could write his lines to the 



1 Clarendon's Life, vol. ill. p. 798. 

2 " Instructions to a Painter for the drawing of the Posture 
and Progress of His Majesty's forces at Sea under the command of 
His Highness Royal : together with the Battel and Victory obtained 
over the Dutch, June 3, 1665." — Waller's Works, 1730, p. 161. 

K 



130 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

Cambridge Carrier somewliat in this manner. Marvell 
has nothing of the magnificence of Dryden, or of the 
finished malice of Pope. He plays the part, and it is 
sincerely played, of the old, honest member of Parlia- 
ment who loves his country and hates rogues and 
speaks right out, calling spades spades and the king's 
women what they ought to be called. He is conversa- 
tional, and therefore coarse. The whole history of the 
events that resulted in the national disgrace is told. 

" The close cabal marked how the Navy eats 
And thought all lost that goes not to the cheats ; 
So therefore secretly for peace decrees, 
Yet for a War the Parliament would squeeze, 
And fix to the revenue such a sum 
Should Goodricke silence and make Paston dumb. 

Meantime through all the yards their orders were 
To lay the ships up, cease the keels begtin. 
The timber rots, the useless axe does rust. 
The unpractised saw lies buried in the dust. 
The busy hammer sleeps, the ropes untwine." 

Parliament is got rid of to the joy of Clarendon. 

" Blither than hare that hath escaped the hounds, 
The house prorogiied, the chancellor rebounds. 
What frosts to fruits, what arsenic to the rat, 
What to fair Denham mortal chocolate,^ 
What an account to Carteret, that and more, 
A parliament is to the chancellor." 

De Ruyter makes his appearance, and Monk 

" in his shirt against the Dutch is pressed. 
Often, dear Painter, have I sat and mused 
Why he should be on all adventures iised. 
Whether his valour they so much admire, 
Or that for cowardice they all retire, 

1 Sir John Denham's wife was reported to have been poisoned 
by a dish of chocolate, at the bidding of the Duchess of York. 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 131 

As heaven in storms, they call, in gusts of state, 
On Monk and Parliament — yet both do hate. 

Ruyter, the while, that had oui* ocean curbed. 
Sailed now amongst our rivers undisturbed ; 
Surveyed their crystal streams and banks so green. 
And beauties ere this never naked seen." 

His flags fly from the topmasts of his ships, but 
where is the enemy ? 

" So up the stream the Belgic navy glides. 
And at Sheerness unloads its stormy sides." 

Chatham was but a few miles further up. 

" There our sick shijis unrigged in summer lay, 
Like moulting fowl, a weak and easy prey. 
For whose strong bulk earth scarce could timber find, 
The ocean water, or the heavens wind. 
Those oaken giants of the ancient race, 
That ruled all seas, and did our channel grace; 
The conscious stag, though once the forest's dread, 
Flies to the wood, and hides his armless head. 
Ruyter forthwith a squadron doth untack ; 
They sail securely through the river's track. 
An English pilot too (O, shame ! O, sin !) 
Cheated of 's j)ay, was he that showed them in." 

The chain at Gillingham is broken, to the dismay of 
Monk, who 

" from the bank that dismal sight does view ; 
Our feather gallants, who came down that day 
To be spectators safe of the new play, 
Leave him alone when first they hear the gun, 
(Cornbury,! the fleetest) and to London run. 
Our seamen, whom no danger's shape could fright, 
Unpaid, refuse to mount their ships for spite. 
Or to their fellows swim on board the Dutch, 
Who show the tempting metal in their clutch." 

1 Clarendon's eldest son. 



132 ANDKEW MABVELL [chap. 

TJpnor Castle avails nought. 

" And Upnor's Castle's ill-deserted wall 
Now needful does for ammunition call." 

The Royal Charles is captured before Monk's face. 

" That sacred Keel that had, as he, restored 
Its excited sovereign on its happy board. 
Now a cheap spoil and the mean victor's slave 
Taught the Dutch colours from its top to wave." 

Horrors accumulate. 

" Each doleful day still with fresh loss returns. 
The loyal London now a third time burns, 
And the true Royal Oak and Royal .James, 
Allied in fate, increase with theirs her flames. 
Of all our navy none shall now survive, 
But that the ships themselves were taught to dive. 
And the kind river in its creek them hides, 
Freighting their pierced keels with oozy tides." 

The situation was indeed serious enough. One wise- 
acre in command in London declared his belief that the 
Tower was no longer " tenable." 

" And were not Ruyter's maw with ravage cloyed, 
Even London's ashes had been then destroyed." 

But the Dutch admiral returns the way he came. 

" Now nothing more at Chatham's left to burn, 
The Holland squadron leisurely return ; 
And spite of Ruperts and of Albemarles, 
To Ruyter's triumph led the captive ' Charles. 
The pleasing sight he often does prolong, 
Her mast erect, tough cordage, timber strong, 
Her moving shape, all these he doth survey. 
And all admires, but most his easy prey. 
The seamen search her all within, witlioiat ; 
Viewing her strength, they yet their conquest doubt ; 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 133 

Then with rude shouts, secure, the air they vex, 
With gamesome joy insulting on her decks. 
Such the feared Hebrew captive, blinded, shorn, 
Was led about in sport, the public scorn." 

The poet then indulges himself in an emotional 
outburst. 

" Black day, accursed ! on thee let no man hail 
Out of the port, or dare to hoist a sail, 
Or row a boat in thy unlucky hour ! 
Thee, the year's monster, let thy dam devour, 
And constant Time, to keep his course yet right, 
Fill up thy space with a redoubled night. 
When aged Thames was bound with fetters base, 
And ]\Iedway chaste ravished before his face. 
And their dear offspring murdered in their sight, 
Thou and thy fellows saw the odious light. 
Sad cliange, since first that happy pair was wed, 
When all the rivers graced their nuptial bed ; 
And father Neptune promised to resign 
His empire old to their immortal line ; 
Now with vain grief their vainer hopes they rue, 
Themselves dishonoured, and the gods. untrue; 
And to each other, helpless couple, moan. 
As the sad tortoise for the sea does groan : 
But most they for their darling Charles complain, 
And were it burned, yet less would be their pain. 
To see that fatal pledge of sea-command, 
Now in the ravisher De Ruyter's hand, 
The Thames roared, swooning Medway turned her tide. 
And were they mortal, both for grief had died." 

A scapegoat had, of course, to be at once provided. 
He was found in Mr. Commissioner Pett, the most 
skilful shipbuilder of the age. 

" After this loss, to relish discontent. 
Some one must be accused by Parliament. 
All our miscarriages on Pett must fall. 
His name alone seems fit to answer all. 



134 ANDREW MARVELL tcHAP. 

Whose counsel first did this mad war beget ? 
"Who all commands sold through the navy? Pett. 
Who would not follow when the Dutch were beat? 
Who treated out the time at Bergen ? Pett. 
Who the Dutch fleet with storms disabled met? 
And, rifling prizes, them neglect? Pett. 
Who with false news prevented the Gazette ? 
The fleet divided ? writ for Rupert ? Pett. 
Who all our seamen cheated of their debt. 
And all our prizes who did swallow ? Pett. 
Who did advise no navy out to set? 
And who the forts left unprepared ? Pett. 
Who to supply with powder did forget 
Languard, Sheerness, Gravesend, and Upnor? Pett. 
Who all our ships exposed in Chatham net ? 
Who should it be but the fanatic Pett ? " 

This outburst can hardly fail to remind the reader 
of a famous outburst of Mr. Micawber's on the subject 
of Uriah Heep. 

The satire concludes with the picture of the king 
in the dead shades of night, alone in his room, startled 
by loud noises of cannons, trumpets, and drums, and 
then visited by the ghost of his father. 

" And ghastly Charles, turning his collar low, 
The purple thread about his neck does show." 

The pensive king resolves on Clarendon's disgrace, 
and on rising next morning seeks out Lady Castle- 
maine, Bennet, and Coventry, vs^ho give him the same 
advice. He knows them all three to be false to one 
another and to him, but is for the moment content to 
do what they wish. 

I have omitted, in this review of a long poem, 
the earlier lines which deal with the composition of 
the House of Commons. All its parties are described, 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 135 

one after another — the old courtiers, the pension- 
hunters, the king's procurers, then almost a depart- 
ment of State. 

" Then the Procurers under Prodgers filed 
Gentlest of men, and his lieutenant mild 
Bronkard, love's squire ; through all the field aiTayed, 
No troop was better clad, nor so well paid." 

Clarendon had his friends, soon sorely to be needed, 
and after them, 

" Next to the lawyers, sordid band, appear, 
Finch in the front and Thmiand in the rear." 

Some thirty-three members are mentioned by their 
names and habits. The Speaker, Sir Edward Turner, 
is somewhat unkindly described. Honest men are 
usually to be found everywhere, and they existed 
even in Charles the Second's pensionary Parliament : — 

" Nor could all these the field have long maintained 
But for the unknown reserve that still remained ; 
A gross of English gentry, nobly born, 
Of clear estates, and to no faction sworn, 
Dear lovers of their king, and death to meet 
For country's cause, that glorious thing and sweet; 
To speak not forward, but in action brave, 
In giving generous, but in council grave; 
Candidly credulous for once, nay twdce ; 
But sure the devil cannot cheat them thrice." 

No member of Parliament's library is complete with- 
out Marvell, who did not forget the House of Com- 
mons smoking-room : — 

" Even iron Strangways chafing yet gave back 
Spent with fatigue, to breathe awhile tabac." 

Charles hastened to make peace with Holland. He 



136 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

was not the man to insist on vengeance or to mourn 
over lost prestige. De Euyter had gone after suffer- 
ing repulses at Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Torbay. 
Peace was concluded at Breda on the 21st of July. 
We gave up Poleroone. Per contra we gained a more 
famous place, New Amsterdam, rechristened New 
York in honour of the duke. All prisoners were to 
be liberated, and the Dutch, despite Sheerness and 
the Royal Charles, agreed to lower their flag to all 
British ships of war. 

The fall, long pending, of Clarendon immediately 
followed the peace. Men's tempers were furious or 
sullen. Hyde had no more bitter, no more cruel 
enemy than Marvell. Why this was has not been 
discovered, but there was nothing too bad for Marvell 
not to believe of any member of Clarendon's household. 
All the scandals, and they were many and horrible, 
relating to Clarendon and his daughter, the Duchess 
of York, find a place in Marvell's satires and epigrams. 
To us Lord Clarendon is a grave and thoughtful figure, 
the statesman-author of The History of the RehelUon and 
Civil Wars in England, that famous, large book, loftily 
planned, finely executed, full of life and character and the 
philosophy of human existence ; and of his o^w Autobi- 
ography, a production which, though it must, like Bur- 
net's History, be read with caution, unveils to the reader 
a portion of that past which usually is as deeply shrouded 
from us as the future. If at times we are reminded in 
reading Clarendon's Life of the old steward in Hogarth's 
plate, who lifts up his hands in horror over the ex- 
travagance of his master, if his pedantry often irritates, 
and his love of place displeases, we recognise these but 
as the shades of the character of a distinguished and 
accomplished public servant. But to Marvell Clarendon 
was rapacious, ambitious, and corrupt, a man who had 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 137 

sold Oliver's Dunkirk to the French, and shared the 
price ; who had selected for the king's consort a barren 
woman, so that his own damaged daughter might at 
least chance to become Queen of England, who hated 
Parliaments and hankered after a standing army, who 
took money for patents, who sold public offices, who 
was bribed by the Dutch about the terms of peace, 
who swindled the ruined cavaliers of the funds sub- 
scribed for their benefit, and had by these methods 
heaped together great wealth which he ostentatiously 
displayed. Even darker crimes than these are hinted 
at. That Marvell was wrong in his estimate of 
Clarendon's character now seems certain; Clarendon 
did not get a penny of the Dunkirk money. The case 
made against him by the House of Commons in their 
articles of impeachment was felt even at the time to 
be flimsy and incapable of proof, and in the many 
records that have come to light since Clarendon's day 
nothing has been discovered to give them support. 
And yet Marvell was a singularly well-informed 
member of Parliament, a shrewd, level-headed man of 
affairs, who knew Lord Clarendon in the way we 
know men we have to see on business matters, whose 
speeches we can listen to, and whose conduct we dis- 
cuss and criticise. " Gently scan your brother-man " 
is a precept Marvell never took to heart ; nor is the 
House of Commons a place where it is either preached 
or practised. 

When Clarendon was well nigh at the height of 
his great unpopularity, he built himself a fine big 
house on a site given him by the king where now is 
Albemarle Street. Where did he get the money from ? 
He employed, in building it, the stones of St. Paul's 
<^'athedral. True, he bought the stones from the Dean 
and Chapter, but if the man you hate builds a great 



138 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

house out of the ruins of a church, is it likely that so 
trivial a fact as a cash payment for the materials is 
going to be mentioned ? Splendid furniture and noble 
pictures were to be seen going into the new palace — 
the gifts, so it was alleged, of foreign ambassadors. 
What was the consideration for these donations ? Eng- 
land's honour ! Clarendon House was at once named 
Dunkirk House, Holland House, Taugiers House. 
Here is Marvell upon it : — 

UPON HIS HOUSE 

" Here lie the sacred bones 
Of Paul beguiled of his stones : 
Here lie golden briberies, 
The price of ruined families ; 
The cavaber's debenture wall, 
Fixed on an eccentric basis : 
Here's Dunkirk-Town and Tangier-Hull, 
The Queen's marriage and all, 
The Dutchman's templum pads." 

Clarendon's fall was rapid. He knew the house of 
Stuart too well to place any reliance upon the king. 
Evelyn visited him on the 27th of August 1667 after 
the seals had been taken away from him, and found 
him "in his bed-chamber very sad." His enemies 
were numerous and powerful, both in the House of 
Commons and at Court, where all the buffoons and 
ladies of pleasure hated him, because — so Evelyn says 
— ''he thwarted some of them and stood in their 
way." In November Evelyn called again and found 
the late Lord-Chancellor in the garden of his new- 
built palace, sitting in his gout wheel-chair and 
watching the new gates setting up towards the north 
and the fields. "He looked and spoke very discon- 
solately. After some while deploring his condition 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 139 

to me, I took my leave. Next morning I heard he 
was gone." * 

The news was true ; on Saturday, the 29th of 
November, he drove to Erith, and after a terrible 
tossing on the nobly impartial Channel the weary 
man reached Calais, and died seven years later in 
Rouen, having well employed his leisure in com- 
pleting his history. His palace was sold for half what 
it cost to the inevitable Monk, Duke of Albemarle. 

On the 3rd of December Marvell writes that the 
House, having heard that Lord Clarendon had " with- 
drawn," forthwith ordered an address to his Majesty 
" that care might be taken for securing all the sea ports 
lest he should pass there." Marvell adds grimly, "I 
suppose he will not trouble you at Hull." The king 
took good care that his late Lord-Chancellor should 
escape. An act of perpetual banishment was at once 
passed, receiving the royal assent on the 19th of 
December. 

Marvell was kept very busy during the early months 
of 1668, inquiring, as our English fashion is, into the 
''miscarriages of the late war." The House more than 
once sat from nine in the morning till eight at night, 
finding out all it could. " What money, arising by the 
poll money, had been applied to the use of the war ? " 
This was an awkward inquiry. The House voted that 
the not prosecuting the first victory of June 1665 
was a miscarriage, and one of the greatest : a snub to 
the Duke of York. The not furnishing the Medway 

1 It is disconcerting to find Evelyn recording this, his last 
visit to Clarendon, in his Diary under date of the 9th December, 
by which time the late Chancellor was in Rouen. One likes 
notes in a diary to be made contemporaneously and not 
"written-up" afterwards. Evelyn makes the same kind of 
mistake about Cromwell's funeral, misdating it a mouth. 



140 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

with a suflRcient guard of ships, though the king had 
then 18,000 men in his pay, was another great mis- 
carriage. The paying of tlie fleet with tickets, without 
money, was a third great miscarriage. All this time 
Oliver Cromwell's skull was grinning on its perch in 
Westminster Hall. 

Besides the honour of England, that of Hull had to 
be defended by its member. A young Lieutenant 
Wise, one of the Hull garrison, had in some boisterous 
fashion affronted the corporation and the mayor. On 
this correspondence ensues; and Marvell waits upon 
the Duke of Albemarle, the head of the army, to obtain 
reparation. 

" I waited yesterday upon my Lord General — and first pre- 
sented your usual fee which tlie General accepted, but saying 
that it was unnecessary and that you might have bin pleased 
to spare it, and he should be so much more at liberty to show 
how voluntary and affectionate he was toward your corpora- 
tion. I returned the civilest words I could coin on for the 
present, and rendered him your humble thanks for his con- 
tinued patronage of you . . . and told him that you had 
further sent him up a small tribute of your Hvill liquor. He 
thanked you again for all these things which you might — he 
said — have spared, and added that if the greatest of your 
military officers should demean himself ill towards you, he 
would take a course with him." 

A mealy-mouthed Lord-General drawing near his 
end.^ 

Wise was removed from the Hull garrison. The 
affronted corporation was not satisfied, and Marvell 
had to argue the point. 

1 The duke died in 1670 and had a magnificent funeral on 
the 30th of April. See Hist. 3ISS. Com., Duke of Portland's 
Papers, vol. iii. p. 314. His laundress-Duchess did not long 
survive him. 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 141 

" And I hope, Sir, you will incline the Bench to consider 
whether I am able or whether it be fit for me to urge it 
beyoiid that point. Yet it is not all his (Wise's) Parliament 
men and relations that have wrought me in the least, but 
what I simply conceive as the state of things now to be 
possible and satisfactory. What would you have more of a 
soldier than to run away and have hira cashiered as to any 
command in your garrison? The first he hath done and the 
second he must submit to. And I assure you whatsoever he 
was among you, he is here a kind of decrepit young gentleman 
and terribly crest-fallen." 

The letter concludes thus : — 

" For I assure you they use all the civility imaginable to 
you, and as we sat there drinking a cup of sack with the 
General, Colonel Legge ^ chancing to be present, there were 
twenty good things said on all hands tending to the good 
fame, reputation, and advantage of the Town, an occasion 
that I was heartily glad of." 

Corporations may not have souls to save and bodies to 
kill, but evidently they have vanities to tickle. 

In November 1669 the House is still busy over the 
accounts. Sir George Carteret was Treasurer of the 
Navy. Marvell refers to him in Tlie Last Instruc- 
tions to a Painter as : — 

" Carteret the rich did the accountants guide 
And in ill English all the world defied." 

The following letter of Marvell's gives an excellent 
account of House of Commons business, both how it is 
conducted, and how often it gets accidentally inter- 
rupted by other business unexpectedly cropping up : — 

" November 20, 1669. 
"Gentlemen, my very worthy friends, — Returning 
after our adjournment to sit upon Wednesday, the House 

1 Afterwards Lord Dartmouth, a great friend of James the 
Second, but one who played a dubious part at the Revolution. 



142 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

having heard what Sir G. Cartaret could say for himselfe, and 
he then commended to withdraw, after a considerable debate, 
put it to the question, whether he were guilty of misde- 
meanour upon the Commissioners first observation, the words 
of which were, That all monyes received by him out of His 
Majesty's Exchequer are by the privy seales assigned for 
particular services, but no such thing observed or specified in 
his payments, whereby he hath assumed to himselfe a liberty 
to make use of the King's treasure for other uses then is 
directed. The House dividing upon the question, the ayes 
went out, and wondered why they were kept out so extra- 
ordinary a time. The ayes proved 138 and the noes 129 ; and 
the reason of the long stay then appeared ; the tellers for the 
ayes chanced to be very ill reckoners, so that they were forced 
to tell severall limes over in the House, and when at last the 
tellers for the ayes would have agreed the noes to be 142, the 
noes would needs say that they were 143, whereupon those for 
the ayes would tell once more and then found the noes to be 
indeed but 129 ; and the ayes then coming in proved to be 
138 ; whereas if the noes had been content with the first 
error of the tellers, Sir George had been quit upon that obser- 
vation. This I have told you so minutely because it is the 
second fatall and ominous accident that hath fain out in the 
divisions about Sir G. Cartaret. Thursday was ordered for 
the second observation, the words of which are, Two hundred 
and thirty thousand seven hundred thirty and one thousand 
pounds thirteen shillings and ninepence, claimed as payd, and 
deposited for security of interest, and yet no distinct specifi- 
cation of time appeares either on his receits or payments, 
whereby no judgment cair be made how interest accrues ; so 
that we cannot yet allow the same. But this day was 
diverted and wholy taken up by a speciall report orderd by 
the Committee for the Bill of Conventicles, that the House 
be informed of severall Conventicles in Westminster which 
might be of dangerous consequences. From hence arose much 
discourse ; also of a report that Ludlow was in England, that 
Commonwealths-men flock about the town, and there were 
meetings said to be, where they talkt of New Modells of 
Government; so that the House ordered a Committee to 
receive informations both concerning Conventicles and these 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 143 

other dangerous meetings; and then entered a resolution 
upon their books without putting it to the question, That 
this House will adhere to His Majesty, and the Government 
of Church and State as now established, against all its 
enemyes. Friday having bin aj)pointed, as I told you in my 
former letter, for the House to sit in a grand Committee upon 
the motion for the King's supply, was spent wholy in debate, 
whether they should do so or no, and concluded at last in a 
consent, that the sitting in a grand Committee iipon the 
motion for the King's supply should be put of till Friday 
next, and so it was ordered. The reason of which kind of 
proceeding, lest you should thinke to arise from an indisposi- 
tion of the House, I shall tell you as they appeai'e to me, to 
have been the expectation of what Bill will come from the 
Lords in stead of that of ours which they threw out, and a 
desire to redresse and see thoi-oughly into the miscarriages of 
mony before any more should be granted. To-day the House 
hath bin upon the second observation, and after a debate till 
foure a'clock, have voted him guilty also of misdemeanor in 
that particular. The Commissioners are ordered to attend the 
House again on JMunday, which is done constantly for the 
illustration of any matter in their report, wherein the House 
is not cleare. And to say the truth, the House receives great 
satisfaction fi'om them, and shows them extraordinai'y respect. 
These are the things of principall notice since my last." 

Carteret eventually was censured and suspended and 
dismissed. 

The sudden incursion of religion during a financial 
debate is highly characteristic of the House of Com- 
mons. 

Whilst Queen Elizabeth and her advisers did succeed 
in making some sort of a settlement of religion having 
regard to the questions of her time, the Restoration 
bishops, an inferior set of men, wholly failed. The 
repressive legislation that followed upon the Act of 
Uniformity, succeeded in establishing and endowing 
(with voluntary contributions) what is sometimes called. 



144 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

absurdly enough, Political Dissent. On points, not of 
doctrine, but of ceremony, and of church government, 
one half of the religiously-minded community were by 
oaths and declarations, and by employing the Sacra- 
ment of the Lord's Supper as " a picklock to a place," 
drawn out of the service of the State. Excluded from 
Parliament and from all corporate bodies, from gram- 
mar-schools and vmiversities, English Dissent learned to 
live its own life, remote from the army, the navy, and 
the civil service, quite outside of what perhaps may 
be fairly called the main currents of the national life. 
Nonconformists venerated their own divines, were 
reared in their own academies and colleges, read their 
own books, went, when the modified law permitted it, 
to their own conventicles in back streets, and made it 
their boast that they had never entered their parish 
churches, for the upkeep of which they were com- 
pelled to subscribe — save for the purpose of being 
married. The nation suffered by reason of this 
complete severance. Trade excepted, there was no 
community of interest between Church and Dissent. 
Sobriety, gravity, a decent way of life, the sense of 
religious obligation (even Avhen united with the habit 
of extemimre prayer, and a hereditary disrespect for 
bishops' aprons), are national assets, as the expression 
now goes, which cannot be disregarded with impunity. 
The Conventicle Act Marvell refers to was a stringent 
measure, imposing pecuniary fines upon any persons of 
sixteen years of age or upwards who " under pretence 
of religion" should be present at any meeting of more 
than five persons, or more than those of the household, 
" in other manner than allowed by the Liturgy and 
practice of the Church of England." Heavier fines were 
imposed upon the preachers. The poet Waller, who 
was "nursed in Parliaments," having been first returned 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 145 

from Amershani in 1621, made a very sensible remark 
on the second reading : "Let tliem alone and they will 
preach against each other ; by this Bill they will incor- 
porate as being all under one calamity."^ But by 
144 to 78 the Bill was read, though it did not become 
law until the following session. An indignant Member 
of Parliament once told Cromwell that he would take 
the "sense" of the House against some proposal. 
"Very well," said Cromwell, "you shall take the ' sense' 
of the House, and I will take the ' nonsense,' and we 
will see who tells the most votes." 

In February 1G70 the king opened a new session, 
and in March Marvell wrote a private letter to a rela- 
tive at Bordeaux, in which he " lends his mind out," 
after a fashion forbidden him in his correspondence 
with his constituents : — 

" Dear Cousin, — ... You know that we having voted 
the King, before Christmas, four hundred thousand pounds, 
and no more; and enquiring severely into ill management, 
and being ready to adjom'n ourselves till February, hisMajesty, 
fortified by some undertakers of the meanest of our House, 
threw up all as nothing, and prorogued us from the first of 
December till the fourteenth of February. All that interval 
there was great and numerous caballing among the courtiers. 
The King also all the while examined at council the reports 
from the Commissioners of Accounts, where they wei-e con- 
tinually discountenanced, and treated rather as offenders than 
judges. In this posture we met, and the King, being exceed- 
ingly necessitous for money, spoke to us stylo minaci et im- 
peraiorio ; and told us the inconveniences which would fall 
on the nation by want of a supply, should not ly at his door; 
that we must not revive any discord betwixt the Lords and 
us; that he himself had examined the accounts, and found 



1 The poet Waller was one of the wittiest speakers the House of 
Commons has ever known. 

L 



14G ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

every penny to have been employed in the war; and he re- 
commended the Scotch union. The Garroway party appeared 
with the usual vigoui-, but the country gentlemen appeared 
not in their true number the first day : so, for want of seven 
voices, the first blow was against them. When we began to 
talkof the Lords, the King sent for us alone, and recommended 
a rasure of all proceedings. The same thing you know that 
we proposed at first. We presently ordered it, and went to 
tell him so the same day, and to thank him. At coming down, 
(a pretty ridiculous thing ! ) Sir Tliomas Cliiford carryed 
Speaker and Mace, and all members there, into the King's 
cellar, to drink his health. The King sent to the Lords more 
peremptoryly, and they, with much grumbling, agreed to the 
rasure. When the Commissioners of Accounts came before 
us, sometimes we heard them pro /orma, but all falls to dirt. 
The terrible Bill against Conventicles is sent up to the Lords ; 
and we and the Lords, as to the Scotch busyness, have desired 
the King to name English Commissioners to treat, but nothing 
they do to be valid, but on a report to Parliament, and an 
act to confirm. We are now, as we think, within a week of 
rising. They are making mighty alterations in the Conven- 
ticle Bill (which, as we sent up, is the quintessence of arbitrary 
malice), and sit whole days, and yet pi'oceed but by inches, 
and will, at the end, probably affix a Scotch clause of the 
King's power in externals. So the fate of the Bill is uncertain, 
but must probably pass, being the price of money. The King 
told some eminent citizens, who applyed to him against it, 
that tliey must address themselves to the Houses, that he 
must not disoblige his friends ; and if it had been in the 
power of their friends, he had gone without money. There 
is a Bill in the Lords to encourage people to buy all the King's 
fee-farm rents ; so he is resolved once more to have money 
enough in his pocket, and live on the common for the future. 
The great Bill begun in the Lords, and which makes more 
ado than ever any Act in this Parliament did, is for enabling 
Lord Ros, long since divorced in the spiritual court, and his 
children declared illegitimate by Act of Parliament, to marry 
again. Anglesey and Ashly, who study and know their 
interests as well as any gentlemen at court, and whose sons 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 147 

have marryed two sisters of Ros, inheritrixes if he has no 
issue, yet they also drive on the Bill with the gi'eatest vigour. 
The King is for the Bill : the Duke of York, and all the Papist 
Lords, and all the Bishops, except Cosins, Reynolds, and 
Wilkins, are against it. They sat all Thursday last, without 
once rising, till almost ten at night, in most solemn and 
memorable debate, whether it should be read the second time, 
or thrown out. At last, at the question, there were forty -two 
persons and six proxys against it, and forty -one persons and 
fifteen proxys for it. If it had not gone for it, the Lord 
Arlington had a power in his pocket from the King to have 
nulled the proxys, if it had been to the purpose. It was read 
the second time yesterday, and, on a long debate whether it 
should be committed, it went for the Bill by twelve odds, in 
persons and proxys. The Duke of York, the bishops, and the 
rest of the party, have entered their protests, on the first day's 
debate, against it. Is not this fine work ? This Bill must 
come down to us. It is my opinion that Lauderdale at one 
ear talks to the King of Monmouth, and Buckingham at the 
other of a new Queen. It is also my opinion that the King 
was never since his coming in, nay, all things considered, no 
King since the Conquest, so absolutely powerful at home, as 
he is at the present ; nor any Parliament, or places, so cer- 
tainly and constantly supplyed with men of the same temper. 
In such a conjuncture, dear Will, what probability is there of 
ray doing any thing to the purpose ? The King would needs 
take the Duke of Albemarle out of his son's hand to bury him 
at his own charges. It is almost three months, and he yet lys 
in the dark unburyed, and no talk of him. He left twelve 
thousand pounds a year, and near two hundred thousand 
pounds in money. His wife dyed some twenty days after 
him ; she layed in state, and was bmyed, at her son's expence, 
in Queen Elizabeth's Chapel. And now, 

Disce, puer, virtutem ex me verumque laborem, 
Fortunam ex aliis. 

" March 21, 1670." 

This remarkable letter lets us into many secrets. 
The Conventicle Bill is " the price of money." The 



148 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

king's interest in the Roos divorce case was believed 
to be due to his own desire to be quit of a barren and 
deserted wife.^ Our most religious king had nineteen 
bastards, but no lawful issue. It may seem strange 
that so high a churchman as Bishop Cosin should have 
taken the view he did, but Cosin had a strong dash 
of the layman in his constitution, and was always an 
advocate of divorce, with permission to re-marry, in 
cases of adultery. 

A further and amending Bill for rebuilding the city 
was before the House — one of eighty-four clauses, " the 
longest Bill, perhaps, that ever past in Parliament," 
says Marvell ; but the Roos Divorce Bill and the Con- 
venticle Bill proved so exciting in the House of Lords 
that they had little time for anything else. Union 
with Scotland, much desired by the king, but regarded 
with great suspicion by all Parliamentarians, fell flat, 
though Commissioners were appointed. 

The Conventicle Bill passed the Lords, who tagged 
on to it a proviso Marvell refers to in his next letter, 
which the Lower House somewhat modified by the 
omission of certain words. Lord Roos was allowed 
to re-marry. The big London Bill got through. 

Another private letter of Marvell's, of this date, is 
worth reading : — 

" Dearest Will, — I wrote to you two letters, and payd 
for them from the posthouse here at Westminster ; to which 
I have had no answer. Perhaps they miscarryed. I sent on 
an answer to the only letter I received from Bourdeaux, and 
having put it into Mr. Nelthorp's hand, I doubt not but it 
came to your's. To proceed. The same day (March 26th 
letter) my letter bore date, there was an extraordinary thing 



1 For a full account of this remarkable case, see Clarendon's 
Life, iii. 733-9. 



IV.] IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 149 

done. The King, about ten o'clock, took boat, with Lauder- 
dale only, and two ordinary attendants, and rowed awhile as 
towards the bridge, and soon turned back to the Parliament 
stairs, and so went up into the House of Lords, and took his 
seat. Almost all of them were amazed, but all seemed so ; 
and the Duke of York especially was very much surprized. 
Being sat, he told them it was a privilege he claimed from his 
ancestors to be present at their deliberations. That there- 
fore, they should not, for his coming, interrupt their debates, 
but proceed, and be covered. They did so. It is true that 
this has been done long ago, but it is now so old, that it is 
new, and so disused, that at any other but so bewitched a 
time as this, it would have been looked on as an high usurpa- 
tion, and breach of privilege. He indeed sat still, for the 
most part, and interposed very little ; sometimes a word or 
two. But the most discerning opinion was, that he did herein 
as he rowed for having had his face first to the Conventicle 
Bill, he turned short to the Lord Ross's. So that, indeed, it 
is credible, tlie King, in prospect of diminishing the Duke of 
York's influence in the Lord's House, in this, or any future 
matter, resolved, and wisely enough at present, to weigh up 
and lighten the Duke's efficacy, by coming himself in person. 
After three or four days continuance, the Lords were very 
well used to the King's jiresence, and sent the Lord Steward 
and Lord Chamberlain, to him, when they might wait, as an 
House on him, to render their humble thanks for the honour 
he did them. The hour was appointed them, and they thanked 
him, and he took it well. So this matter, of such importance 
on all great occasions, seems riveted to them, and us, for the 
future, and to all posterity. Now the Lord Ross's Bill came 
in order to another debate, and the King present. Neverthe- 
less the debate lasted an entire day ; and it passed by very 
few voices. The King has ever since continued his session 
among them, and says it is better than going to a play. In 
this session the Lords sent down to us a proviso ^ for the King, 



1 "Provided, etc., that neither this Act nor anything therein 
contained shall extend to invalidate or avoid his Majesty's 
supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs [or to destroy any of his 
Majesty's rights powers or prerogatives belonging to the 



150 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. iv. 

that would have restored hiin to all civil or ecclesiastical pre- 
rogatives which his ancestors had enjoyed at any time since 
the Conquest. There was never so compendious a piece of 
absolute universal tyranny. But the Commons made them 
ashamed of it, and retrenched it. The Parliament was never 
embarrassed, beyond recovery. We are all venal cowards, 
except some few. What plots of State will go on this interval 
I know not. There is a new set of justices of peace framing- 
through the whole kingdom. The governing cabal, since 
Ross's busyness, are Buckingham, Lauderdale, Ashly, Orrery, 
and Trevor. Not but the other cabal too have seemingly 
sometimes their turn. Madam,^ our King's sister, during the 
King of France's progress in Flanders, is to come as far as 
Canterbury. There will doubtless be family counsels then. 
Some talk of a French Queen to be then invented for our 
King. Some talk of a sister of Denmark ; others of a good 
virtuous Protestant here at home. The King disavows it; 
yet he has sayed in publick, he knew not why a woman may 
not be divorced for barrenness, as a man for impotency. The 
Lord Barclay went on Monday last for Ireland, the King to 
Newmarket. God keep, and increase you, in all things. — 
Yours, etc. 

" April U, 1670." 

Imperial Crown of this realm or at any time exercised by 
himself or any of his predecessors Kings or Queens of Eng- 
land] but that his Majesty his heirs and successors may from 
time to time and at all times hereafter exercise and enjoy all 
such powers and authorities aforesaid as fully and amply as 
himself or any of his predecessors have or might have done the 
same anything in this Act (or any other law statute or usage 
to the contrary) notwithstanding." The words in brackets 
were rejected by the Commons. See Parliamentary History, 
iv. 446-7. 

1 Madame's business is now well known. The secret Treaty 
of Dover was the result of this visit. 



CHAPTER V 

"the rehearsal transprosed" 

It is never easy for ecclesiastical controversy to force 
its way into literature. The importance of the theme 
will be questioned by few. The ability displayed in 
its illumination can be denied by none. It is the 
temper that usually spoils all, A collection in any 
way approaching completeness, of the pamphlets this 
contention has produced in England, would contain 
tens of thousands of volumes ; full of curious learning 
and anecdotes, of wide reading and conjecture, of 
shrewdness and wit; yet these books are certainly 
the last we would seek to save from fire or water. 
Could they be piled into scales of moral measure- 
ment a single copy of the Imitatio, of the Holy 
Dying, of the Saint''s Rest, would outweigh them all. 
Man may not be a religious animal, but he recognises 
and venerates the spirit of religion whenever he per- 
ceives it, and it is a spirit which is apt to evaporate 
amidst the strife of rival wits. Who can doubt the 
sincerity of Milton, when he exclaimed with the sad 
prophet Jeremy, "Woe is me my Mother that thou 
hast borne me a man of strife and contention." 

Marvell's chief prose work, the two parts of 77*6 

Rehearsal Transprosed, is a very long pamphlet indeed, 

composed by way of reply to certain publications 

of Samuel Parker, afterwards Bishop of Oxford. 

151 



152 ANDKEW MAEVELL [chap. 

Controversially Mar veil's book was a great success.^ 
It amused the king, delighted the wits, was welcomed, 
if not read, by the pious folk whose side it espoused, 
whilst its literary excellence was sufficient to win, in 
after years, the critical approval of Swift, whose style, 
though emphatically his own, bears traces of its master 
having given, I will not say his days and nights, but 
certainly some profitable hours, to the study of Marvell's 
prose. 

Biographers of controversialists seldom do justice to 
the other side. Possibly they do not read it, and 
Parker has been severely handled by my predecessors. 
He was not an honour to his profession, being, per- 
haps, as good or as bad a representative of the seamy 
side of State Churchism as there is to be found. He 
was the son of a Puritan father, and whilst at Wadham 
lived by rule, fasting and praying. He took his degree 
in the early part of 1659, and migrating to Trinity 
came under the influence of Dr. Bathurst, then Senior 
Fellow, to whom, so he says in one of his dedications, 
" I owe my first rescue from the chains and fetters of 
an unhappy education." ^ Anything Parker did he 

1 " But the most virulent of all that writ against the sect was 
Parker, afterwards made Bishop of Oxford by King James : 
who was full of satirical vivacity and was considerably learned, 
but was a man of no judgment and of as little virtue, and as 
to religion rather impious : after he had for some years entei'- 
tained the nation with several virulent books writ with much 
life, he was attacked by the liveliest droll of the age, who 
writ in a burlesque strain but with so peculiar and entertaining 
a conduct that from the King down to the tradesman his books 
were read with great pleasure, that not only humbled Parker 
but the whole party, for the author of the Rehearsal Trans- 
prosed had all the men of wit (or as the French phrase it all 
the laughers) on his side." — Burnet's History of his Own Time. 

2 See the dedication to A Free and Impartial Censure of the 
Plalonick Philosophy, by Sam Parker, A.M., Oxford 1666. 



v.] "THE EEHEAESAL TRANSPROSED " 153 

did completely, aud we next hear of him in London in 
1665, a nobleman's chaplain, setting the table in a roar 
by making fun of his former friends, " a mimical way 
of drolling upon the puritans." ''He followed the 
town-life, haunted the best companies and, to polish 
himself from any pedantic roughness, he read and saw 
the plays with much care and more jJi'sparing than 
most of the auditory." In 1667 the Archbishop of 
Canterbury, Dr. Sheldon, a very mundane person in- 
deed, made Parker his chaplain, and three years later 
Archdeacon of Canterbury. He reached many prefer- 
ments, so that, says Marvell, " his head swell'd like 
any bladder with wind and vapour." He had an active 
pen and a considerable range of subject. In 1670 he 
produced " A Discourse of Ecclesiastical Politic where- 
in the Authority of the Civil Magistrate over the Con- 
sciences of Subjects in Matters of External Religion is 
Asserted ; The Mischiefs and Inconveniences of Tolera- 
tion are represented and all Pretenses pleaded in behalf 
of Liberty of Conscience are fully answered." Some one 
instantly took up the cudgels in a pamphlet entitled 
Insolence and Impudence Triumphant, and the famous 
Dr. Owen also protested in Truth and Innocence Vindi- 
cated. Parker replied to Owen in A Defence and Con- 
timiation of Ecclesiasticcd Politie, and in the following 
year, 1672, reprinted a treatise of Bishop Bramholl's 
with a preface " shewing what grounds there are of 
Fears and Jealousies of Popery." 

This was the state of the controversy when Marvell 
entered upon it with his Rehearsal Transprosed, a 
fantastic title he borrowed for no very good reasons 

Parker was a man of some taste, and I have in my small 
collection a beautifully bound copy of this treatise presented 
by the author to Seth Ward, then Bishop of Exeter, and after- 
wards of Salisbury. 



154 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

from the farce of the hour, and a very good farce too, 
the Duke of Buckingham's Rehearsal, which was per- 
formed for the first time at the Theatre Royal on the 
7th of November 1671, and printed early in 1672. Most 
of us have read Sheridan's Critic before we read Buck- 
ingham's Rehearsal, which is not the way to do justice 
to the earlier piece. It is a matter of literary tradi- 
tion that the duke had much help in the composition 
of a farce it took ten years to make. Butler, Sprat, 
and Clifford, the Master of Charterhouse, are said to 
be co-authors. However this may be, the piece was a 
great success, and both Marvell and Parker, I have no 
doubt, greatly enjoyed it, but I cannot think the former 
was wise to stuff his plea for Liberty of Conscience so 
full as he did with the details of a farce. His doing so 
should, at all events, acquit him of the charge of being 
a sour Puritan. In the Rehearsal Bayes (Dryden), who 
is turned by Sheridan in his adaptation of the piece 
into Mr. Puif, is made to produce out of his pocket his 
book of Drama Commonplaces, and the play proceeds 
{Johnson smdS^nithheing Sheridan's Dangle and Sneer) : 

"Johnson. Drama Commonplaces ! pray what 's that? 

Bayes. Why, Sir, some certain lielps, that we men of Art 
have found it convenient to make use of. 

Johnson. How, Sir, help for Wit? 

Bayes. I, Sir, that 's my position. And I do here averr, 
that no man yet the Sun e'er shone upon, has parts suf- 
ficient to furnish out a Stage, except it be with the help 
of these my rules. 

Johnson. What are those Rules, I pray? 

Bayes. Why, Sir, my first Rule is the Rule of Transver- 
siou, or Regula Duplex, changing Verse into Pi'ose, or 
Prose into Verse, alternative as you please. 

Smith. How 's that. Sir, by a Rule, I pray? 

Bayes. Why, thus, Sir ; nothing more easy when under- 
stood : I take a Book in my hand, either at home, or 



v.] "THE REHEARSAL TRANSPROSED " 155 

elsewhere, for that 's all one, if there be any Wit in 't, 
as there is no Book but has some, I Transverse it; that 
is, if it be Prose, put it into Verse (but that takes up 
some time), if it be Verse, put it into Prose. 

Johnson. Methinks, Mr. Brii/es, that putting Verse into 
Prose should be called Transprosing. 

Bayes. By my troth, a very good Notion, and hereafter it 
shall be so." 

Marvell must be taken to have meant by his title 
that he saw some resemblance between Parker and. 
Bayes, and, indeed, he says he does, and gives that 
as one of his excuses for calling Parker Bayes all 
through : — 

" But before I commit myself to the dangerous depths of 
his Discourse which I am now upon the brink of, I would 
with his leave, make a motion ; that instead of Author I may 
henceforth indifferently well call him Mr. Bayes as oft as I 
shall see occasion. And that first because he has no name, 
or at least will not own it, though he himself writes under 
the greatest security, and gives us the first letters of other 
men's names before he be asked them. Secondly, because he 
is, I perceive, a lover of elegancy of style and can endure no 
man's tautologies but his own ; and therefore I would not 
distaste him with too frequent repetition of one word. But 
chiefly because Mr. Bayes and he do very much symbolise, 
in their understandings, in their expressions, in their humour, 
in their contempt and quarrelling of all others, though of their 
own profession." 

Butjusticemust be done even to Parker before handing 
him over to the Tormentor. What were his positions ? 
He was a coarse-fibred, essentially irreligious fellow, the 
accredited author of the reply to the question " What is 
the best body of Divinity ? " " That which would help 
a man to keep a Coach and six horses," but he is a lucid 
and vigorous writer, knowing very well that he had to 
steer his ship through a narrow and dangerous channel. 



156 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

avoiding Hobbism on the one side and tender con- 
sciences on the other. Each generation of State 
Churchmen has the same task. The channel remains 
to-day just as it ever did, with Scylla and Charybdis 
presiding over their rocks as of old. Hobbes's Leviathan 
appeared in 1651, and in 1670 both his philosophy and 
his statecraft were fashionable doctrine. All really 
pious people called Hobbes an Atheist. Technically 
he was nothing of the sort, but it matters little what 
he was technically, since no plain man who can read 
can doubt that Hobbes's enthronement of the State 
was the dethronement of God : — 

" Seeing then that in every Christian commonwealth the 
civil sovereign is the supreme factor to whose charge the 
whole flock of his subjects is committed, and consequently 
that it is by his authority that all other pastors are made and 
have power to teach and perform all other pastoral offices, it 
followeth also that it is from the civil sovereign that all other 
pastors derive their right of teaching, preaching and other 
functions pertaining to that office, and that they are but his 
ministers in the same way as the magistrates of towns, judges 
in Court of Justice and commanders of assizes are all but 
ministers of him that is the magistrate of the whole common- 
wealth, judge of all causes and commander of the whole 
militia, which is always the Civil Sovereign. And the reason 
hereof is not because they that teach, but because they that 
are to learn, are his subjects." — {The Leriaihan, Hobbes's 
English Works (Molesworth's Edition), vol. iii. p. 539.) 

Hobbes shirks nothing, and asks himself the ques- 
tion. What if a king, or a senate or other sovereign 
person forbid us to believe in Christ ? The answer 
given is, "such forbidding is of no effect; because 
belief and unbelief never follow men's commands." 
But suppose " we be commanded by our lawful prince 
to say with our tongue we believe not, must we obey 
such command ? " Here Hobbes a little hesitates to 



v.] "THE REHEARSAL TRANSPROSED" 157 

say outright "Yes, you must"; but he does say 
" whatsoever a subject is compelled to do in obedience 
to his own Sovereign, and doth it not in order to his 
own mind, but in order to the laws of his country, 
that action is not his, but his Sovereign's — nor is it 
that he in this case deuieth Christ before men, but his 
Governor and the law of his country." Hobbes then 
puts the case of a Mahomedan subject of a Christian 
Commonwealth who is required under pain of death 
to be present at the Divine Service of the Christian 
Church — what is he to do ? If, says Hobbes, you say 
he ought to die, then you authorise all private men to 
disobey their princes in maintenance of their religion, 
true or false, and if you say the Mahomedan ought to 
obey, you admit Hobbes' s proposition and ought to 
consent to be yourself bound by it. (See Hobbes's 
English Works, iii. 493.) 

The Church of England, though anxious both to 
support the king and suppress the Dissenters, could 
not stomach Hobbes ; but if it could not, hovy was it 
to deal Avith Hobbes's question, " if it is ever right to 
disobey your lawful prince, who is to determine ivheu 
it is right ? " 

Parker seeks to grapple with this difficulty. He 
disowns Hobbes. 

" When men have once swallowed this principle, that 
Mankind is free from all obligations antecedent to the laws 
of the Commonwealth, and that the Will of the Sovereign 
Power is the only measure of Good and Evil, they proceed 
suitably to its consequences to believe that no Religion can 
obtain the force of law till it is established as such by 
supreme authority, that the Holy Scriptures were not laws to 
any man till they were enjoyn'd by the Christian Magistrate, 
and that if the Sovereign Power would declare the Alcoran to 
be Canonical Scripture, it would be as much the Word of 



158 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

God as the Four Gospels. (See Hohhes, vol. iii. p. 366.) So 
that all Religions are in reality nothing but Cheats and im- 
postures to awe the common people to obedience. And 
therefore although Princes may wisely make use of the foibles 
of Religion to serve their own turns uj^on the silly multitude, 
yet 'tis below their wisdom to be seriously concerned them- 
selves for such fooleries." (Parker's Ecc. Politic, p. 137.) 

As against this fashionable Hobbism, Parker pleads 
Conscience. 

" When anything that is apparently and intrinsically evil 
is the Matter of a Human Law, whether it be of a Civil or 
Ecclesiastical concern, here God is to be obeyed rather than 
Man." 

He forcibly adds : — 

" Those who would take off from the Consciences of Men 
all obligations antecedent to those of Human Laws, instead 
of making the power of Princes Supreme, Absolute and Un- 
controllable, they utterly enervate all their authority, and 
set their subjects at perfect liberty from all their commands. 
For if we once remove all the antecedent obligations of Con- 
science and Religion, Men will no further be bound to submit 
to their laws than only as themselves shall see convenient, 
and if they are under no other restraint it will be their 
wisdom to rebel as oft as it is their interest." (Ecc. Politie, 
pp. 112-113.) 

But though when dealing with Hobbes, Parker thinks 
fit to assert the claims of conscience so strongly, when 
lie has to grapple with those who, like the immortal 
author of The Pilgrim's Progress, " devilishly and per- 
niciously abstained from coming to Church," and 
upheld *' unlawful Meetings and Conventicles," his 
tone alters, and it is hard to distinguish his position 
from that of the philosopher of Malmesbury. 

Parker's argument briefly stated, and as much as 
possible in his own vigorous language, comes to this : 



v.] "THE KEHEARSAL TRANSPROSED " 159 

There is and always must be a competition between 
the prerogative of the Prince or State and that of 
Conscience, which on this occasion is defined as " every 
private man's own judgment and persuasion of things." 
" Do subjects rebel against their Sovereign ? 'Tis Con- 
science that takes up arms. Do they murder Kings ? 
'Tis under the conduct of Conscience. Do they 
separate from the communion of the Church ? 'Tis 
Conscience that is the Schismatick. Everything 
that a man has a mind to is his Conscience." (Ecc. 
PoUtie, p. 6.) 

How is this competition to be resolved ? Parker 
answers in exact language which would have met with 
John Austin's warm approval. 

" The Supreme Government of every Commonwealth, 
wherever it is lodged, must of necessity be universal, absolute 
and uncontrollable. For if it be limited, it may be con- 
trolled, but 'tis a thick and palpable contradiction to call 
such a power supreme in that whatever controls it must as to 
that case be its Superior. And therefore affairs of Religion 
being so strongly influential upon affairs of State, they must 
be as uncontrollably subject to the Supreme Power as all 
other Civil concerns." (^Ecc. PoUtie, p. 27.) 

If the magistrate may make penal laws against 
swearing and blasphemy, why not as to rites and 
ceremonies of public worship ? (39.) Devotion to- 
wards God is a virtue akin to gratitude to man ; 
religion is a branch of morality. The Puritans' talk 
about grace is a mere imposture, (76) which extracts 
from Parker vehement language. What is there to 
make such a fuss about ? he cries. Why cannot you 
come to Church ? You are left free to think what you 
like. Your secret thoughts are your own, but living 
as you do in society, and knowing as you must how, 
unless the law interferes, " every opinion must make 



160 ANDKEW MARVELL [chap. 

a sect, and every sect a faction, and every faction 
when it is able, a war, and every war is the cause of 
God, and the cause of God can never be prosecuted 
with too much violence " (16), why cannot you con- 
form to a form of worship which, though it does not 
profess to be prescribed in all particulars, contains 
nothing actually forbidden in the Scriptures ? What 
authority have Dissenters for singing psalms in metre ? 
" Where has our Saviour or his Apostles enjoined a 
directory for public worship? What Scripture com- 
mand is there for the three significant ceremonies of 
the Solemn League and Covenant, viz. that the whole 
congregation should take it (1) uncovered, (2) stand- 
ing, (3) with their right hand lift up bare " (184), and 
so on. 

In answer to the objection that the civil magistrate 
might establish a worship in its own nature sinful and 
sensual, Parker replies it is not in the least likely, and 
the risk must be run. '' Our enquiry is to find out the 
best way of settling the world that the state of things 
admit of — if indeed mankind were infallible, this con- 
troversy were at an end, but seeing that all men are 
liable to errors and mistakes, and seeing that there is 
an absolute necessity of a supreme power in all public 
affairs, our question (I say) is. What is the most 
prudent and expedient way of settling them, not that 
possibly might be, but that really is. And this (as I 
have already sufficiently proved) is to devolve their 
management on the supreme civil power which, though 
it may be imperfect and liable to errors and mistakes, 
yet 'tis the least so, and is a much better way to attain 
public peace and tranquillity than if they were left to 
the ignorance and folly of every private man " (212). 

I now feel that at least I have done Parker full 
justice, but as so far I have hardly given an example 



v.] "THE REHEARSAL TRANSPROSED " 161 

of his familiar style, I must find room for two or three 
final quotations. The thing Parker hated most in the 
world was a Tender Conscience. He protests against the 
weakness which is content with passing penal laws, 
but does not see them carried out for fear of wounding 
these trumpery tender consciences. "Most men's 
minds or consciences are weak, silly and ignorant 
things, acted by fond and absurd principles and im- 
posed upon by their vices and their passions." (7.) 
" However, if the obligation of laws must yield to that 
of a tender conscience, how impregnably is every man 
that has a mind to disobey armed against all the com- 
mands of his superiors. No authority shall be able 
to govern him farther than he himself pleases, and if 
he dislike the law he is sufficiently excused (268). 
A weak conscience is the product of a weak under- 
standing, and he is a very subtil man that can find 
the difference between a tender head and a tender 
conscience (269). It is a glorious thing to suffer for a 
tender conscience, and therefore it is easy and natural 
for some people to affect some little scruples against 
the commands of authority, thereby to make them- 
selves obnoxious to some little penalties, and then 
what godly men are they that are so ready to be 
punished for a good conscience" (278). *'The voice 
of the publick law cannot but drown the uncertain 
whispers of a tender conscience; all its scruples are 
hushed and silenced by the commands of authority. 
It dares not whimper when that forbids, and the nod 
of a prince awes it into silence and submission. But 
if they dare to murmur, and their proud stomachs will 
swell against the rebukes of their superiors, then there 
is no remedy but the rod and correction. They must 
be chastised out of their peevishness and lashed into 
obedience (305). The doctor concludes his treatise 



162 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

with the words always dear to men of fluctuating 
opinions, ' What I have written, I have written ' " (326). 

Whilst Parker was writing this book in his snug 
quarters in the Archbishop's palace at Lambeth, 
Bunyan was in prison in Bedford for refusing to take 
the communion on his knees in his parish church ; and 
Dr. Manton, who had been offered the Deanery of 
Rochester, was in the Gate House Prison under the 
Five Mile Act. 

The first part of Tlie Rehearsal !r?*a>i,s25)'ose'(:/, though its 
sub-title is " Animadversions upon a late book intituled 
a Preface shewing what grounds there are of Fears and 
Jealousies of Popery," deals after Marvell's own fashion 
with all three of Parker's books, the Ecclesiastical Politie, 
the Bramhall Preface, and the Defence of the Ecclesias- 
tical Politie. It is by no means so easy to give a fair 
notion of the Rehearsal Transprosed in a short compass, 
as it was of Parker's line of argument. The parson 
wrote more closely than the Member of Parliament. 
I cannot give a better description of Marvell's method 
than in Parker's own words in his preface to his 
Reproof to the Rehearsal Transprosed, which appeared 
in 1673 and gave rise to Marvell's second part : — 

" When," wi'ites Parker, " I first condemned myseK to the 
drudgery of this Reply, I intended nothing but a serious pro- 
secution of my Argument, and to let the World see that it is 
not reading Histories or Plays or Gazettes, nor going on 
pilgrimage to Geneva, nor learning French and Italian, nor 
passing the Alps, nor being a cunning Gamester that can 
qualify a man to discourse of Conscience and Ecclesiastical 
Policy ; in that it is not capping our Argument with a story 
that will answer it, nor clapping an apothegm upon an assertion 
that will prove it, nor stringing up Proverbs and Similitudes 
upon one another that will make up a Coherent Discourse." 

Allowing for bias this is no unfair account of 



v.] "THE REHEARSAL TRANSFROSED" 163 

Marvell's method, and it was just because this was 
Marvell's method that he succeeded so well in amusing 
the king and in pleasing the town, and that he may 
still be read by those Avho love reading with a fair 
measure of interest and enjoyment. 

Witty and humorous men are always at a dis- 
advantage except on the stage. The hum-drum is the 
style for Englishmen. Bishop Burnet calls Marvell 
"a droll," Parker, who was to be a bishop, calls him 
"a buffoon." Marvell is occasionally humorous and 
not infrequently carries a jest beyond the limits of 
becoming mirth; but he is more often grave. Yet 
when he is, his gravity was treated either as one of 
his feebler jokes or as an impertinence. But as it is 
his wit alone that has kept him alive he need not be 
pitied overmuch. 

The substance of Marvell's reply to Parker, apart 
altogether from its by -play, is to be found in passages 
like the following : — 

" Here it is that after so great an excess of wit, he thinks 
fit to take a julep and re-settle his brain and the government. 
He grows as serious as 'tis possible for a madman, and pre- 
tends to sum-up the whole state of the controversy with the 
Nonconformists. And to be sure he will make the story as 
plausible for himself as he may ; but therefore it was that I 
have before so particularly quoted and boxind him up with 
his own words as fast as such a Proteus could be pinion'd. 
For he is as waxen as the first matter, and no form comes 
ainiss to him. Every change of posture does either alter his 
opinion or vary the expression by which we should judge of 
it ; and sitting he is of one mind, and standing of another. 
Therefore I take myself the less concern'd to fight with a 
windmill like Quixote ; or to whip a gig as boyes do ; or with 
the lacqueys at Charing-Crossor Lincohi's-Iun-Fields to play 
at the Wheel of Fortune; lest I should fall into the hands of 
my Lord Chief-Justice, or Sir Edmond Godfrey. The truth 



164 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

is, in short, and let Bayes make more or less of it if he can, 
Bayes had at first built-up such a stupendous magistrate as 
never was of God's making. He had put all princes upon the 
rack to stretch them to his dimension. And as a straight 
line continued grows a circle, he had given them so infinite a 
power, that it was extended unto impotency. For though he 
found it not till it was too late in the caiise, yet he felt it all 
along (which is the understanding of brutes) in the effect. 
For hence it is that he so often complains that princes know 
not aright that supremacy over consciences, to which they 
were so lately, since their deserting the Church of Rome, 
restored ; that in most Nations government was not rightly 
understood, and many expressions of that nature : whereas 
indeed the matter is, that princes have always found that 
uncontroulable government over conscience to be both unsafe 
and impracticable. He had run himself here to a stand, and 
perceived that there was a God, there was Scripture ; the 
magistrate himself had a conscience, and must 'take care that 
he did not enjoyn things apparently evil.' But after all, he 
finds hiuiself again at the same stand here, and is run up to 
the wall by an angel. God, and Scripture, and conscience 
will not let him go further ; but he owns, that if the magis- 
trate enjoyns things apparently evil, the subject may have 
liberty to remonstrate. What shall he do, then ? for it is too 
glorious an enterprize to be abandoned at the first rebuffe. 
Why, he gives us a new translation of the Bible, and a new 
commentary ! He saith, that tenderness of conscience might 
be allowed m a Church to be constituted, not in a Church 
constituted already. That tenderness of conscience and scan- 
dal are ignorance, pride, and obstinacy. He saith, the Non- 
conformists should communicate with him till they have 
clear evidence that it is evil. This is a civil way indeed of 
gaining the question, toperswade men that are unsatisfied, to 
be satisfied till they be dissatisfied. He threatens, he rails, 
he jeers them, if it were possible, out of all their consciences 
and honesty; and finding that will not do, he calls out the 
magistrate, tells him these men are not fit to live ; there can 
be no security of government wliile they are in being. Bring 
out the pillories, whijaping-posts, gallies ( = galleys), rods. 



v.] "THE REHEARSAL TRANSPROSED" 165 

and axes (which are ratio ultima cleri, a clergyman's last 
argument, ay and his first too), and pull in pieces all the 
Trading Corporations, those nests of Faction and Sedition. 
This is a faitliful account of the sum and intention of all his 
undertaking, for which, I confess, he was as pick'd a man as 
could have been employed or found out in a whole king- 
dome; but it is so much too hard a task for any man to 
atchieve, that no goose but would grow giddy with it." ^ 

In reply to what Parker had written about the 
unreasonable fuss made by the Dissenters over the 
" two or three symbolical ceremonies " called sacra- 
ments, Marvell says : — 

" They (the Nonconformists) complain that these things 
should be imposed on them with so high a penalty as want 
nothing of a sacramental nature but divine institution. And 
because a human institution is herein made of equal force to 
a divine institution therefore it is that they are aggrieved. . . . 
For without the sign of the Cross our Church will not receive 
any one in Baptism ; as also without kneeling no man is 
suffered to come to the Communion. . . . But here, I say, 
then is their (the Nonconformists') main exception that things 
indifferent and that have no proper signature or significancy 
to that purpose should by command be made conditions of 
Church-communion. I have many times wished for peace- 
ableness' sake that they had a greater latitude, but if, unless 
they should stretch their consciences till they tear again, they 
cannot conform, what remedy? For I must confess that 
Christians have a better right and title to the Church and to 
the ordinances of God there, than the Author hath to his 
surplice. . . . Bishop Bramhall saith, ' I do profess to all the 
world that the transforming of indifferent opinions into neces- 
sary articles of faith hath been that insana laurux or cursed 
bay tree, the cause of all our brawling and contention.' That 
which he saw in matter of doctrine, he would not discern in 
discipline. ... It is true and very piously done that our 
Church doth declare that the kneeling at the Lord's Supper 
is not enjoined for adoration of those elements and concerning 

1 Grosart, vol. ill. pp. 145-8. 



166 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

the other ceremonies as before. But the Romanists (from 
whom we have tliem and who said of old we would come to 
feed on their meat as well as eat of their porridge) do offer us 
here many a fair declaration and distinction in very weighty 
matters to which nevertheless the conscience of our Church 
hath not complyed. But in this particular matter of kneeling 
which came in first with the doctrine of transubstantiation, 
the Romish Church do reproach us with flat idolatry, in that 
we, not believing the real presence in the bread and wine, yet 
do pay to something or other the same adoration. Suppose 
the ancient pagans had declared to the primitive Christians 
that the offerings of some grains of incense was only to per- 
fume the room — do you think the Christians would have 
palliated so far and colluded with their consciences? There- 
fore although the Church do consider herself so much as 
not to alter her mode unto the fashion of others, yet I cannot 
see why she ought to exclude those from communion whose 
weaker consciences cannot, for fear of scandal, step further." ^ 

With Parker's tliunders and threats of the authority 
of princes and states, Marvell deals more in the mood 
of a statesman than of a philosopher, more as a man of 
affairs than as a jurist. He deplores the ferocity of 
Parker's tone and that of a certain number of the 
clergy. 

"Why is it," he asks, "that this kind of clergy should 
always be and have been for the most precipitate, brutish, 
and sanguinary counsels? The former Civil War cannot 
make them wise, nor his Majesty's happy return good-natured, 
but they are still for running things up unto the same ex- 
tremes. The softness of the Universities where they have 
been bred, the gentleness of Christianity, in which they have 
been nurtured, hath but exasperated their nature, and they 
seem to have contracted no idea of wisdom but what they 
learnt at school — the pedantry of Whipping. For whether 
it be or no that the clergy are not so well fitted by educa- 
tion as others for political affairs I know not, though I 
should rather think they have advantage above others, and 

1 Grosart, vol. iii. pp. 155-9. 



v.] "THE REHEARSAL TRANSPROSED " 167 

even if they would but keep to their Bibles, might make the 
best Ministers of State in the world ; yet it is generally 
observed that things miscarry under their government. If 
there be any council more pi-ecipitate, more violent, more 
extreme than other, it is theirs. Truly, I think the reason 
that God does not bless them in affairs of State is because 
he never intended them for that employment." ^ 

Of Archbishop Laud and Charles the First, Marvell 
says : — 

" I am confident the Bishop studied to do both God and his 
Majesty good service ; but alas, how utterly was he mistaken. 
Though so learned, so pious, so wise a man, he seem'd to know 
nothing beyond Ceremonies, Armenianism, and Mainwaring. 
AVith that he begun, with that ended, and tliereby deform'd 
the whole reign of the best prince that ever wielded the 
English sceptre. For liis late Majesty, being a prince truly 
pious and religious, was therefore the more inclined to esteem 
and favour the clergy. Andtlience, though himself of a most 
exquisite understanding, yet he could not trust it better than 
in their treatment. AVhereas every man is best at his own 
post, and so the preacher in the pulpit." ^ 

Kings, Marvell points out to Parker, must take 
wider views than parsons. 

<' 'Tis not with them as with you. You have but one cure 
of souls, or perhaps two as being a nobleman's chaplain, to 
look after, and if you made conscience of discharging them as 
you ought, you would find you had work sufficient without 
writing your ' Ecclesiastical Policies.' But they are the in- 
cumbents of whole kingdoms, and the rectorship of the 
common people, the nobility, and even of the clergy. The 
care I say of all this rests on them, so that they are fain to 
condescend to many things for peace sake and the quiet of 
mankind that your provid heart would break before it would 
bend to. They do not think fit to require any thing that is 
impossible, unnecessary or wanton of their people, but are fain 
to consider the very temper of the climate in which they live, 
the constitution and laws under which they have been formerly 

1 Grosart, vol. iii. pp. 170, 210-1. 2 Grosart, vol. iii. p. 211. 



168 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

bred, and upon all occasions to give them good words and 
humour them like children. They reflect upon the histories 
of former times and the present transactions to regulate them- 
selves by in every circumstance. . . . They (Kings) do not 
think fit to command things unnecessary." ^ 

These extracts, however fatal to Marvell's traditional 
reputation in the eighteenth century as a Puritan and 
a Republican, call for no apology. 

An example of Marvell's Interludes ought to be 
given. There are many to choose from. 

" There was a worthy divine, not many years dead, who in 
his younger time, being of a facetious and unlucky humour, 
was commonly known by the name of Tom Triplet ; he was 
brought up at Paul's school under a severe master. Dr. Gill, 
and from thence he went to the University. There he took 
liberty (as 'tis usual with those that are emancipated from 
School) to tel tales and make the discipline ridiculous under 
which he was bred. But not suspecting the doctor's intelli- 
gence, coming once to town he went in full school to give him 
a visite and expected no less than to get a play day for his 
former acquaintances. But instead of that he found himself 
hors'd uj) in a trice, though he appeal'd in vain to the privi- 
ledges of the University, pleaded adidtus and invoked the 
mercy of the spectators. Nor was he let down till the master 
had planted a grove of birch in his back-side for the terrour 
and publick example of all waggs that divulge the secrets of 
Prisciau and make merry with their teachers. This stuck so 
with Triplet that all his life-time he never forgave the doctor, 
but sent him every New Year's tide an anniversary ballad to 
a new tune, and so in his turn avenged himself of his jerking 
pedagogue." ^ 

Marvell's game of picquet with a parson plays such 
a part in Parker's Reproof to the Rehearsal Transprosed 
that it deserves to be mentioned : — 

" 'Tis not very many years ago that I used to play at 
picket ; there was a gentleman of your robe, a dignitory of 

1 Grosart, vol. ill. p. 171. 2 Grosart, vol. iii. p. 63. 



v.] "TPIE REHEARSAL TRANSPROSED " 169 

Lincoln, very well known and remembered in tlie ordinaries, 
but being not long since dead, I will save his name. Now I 
used to play pieces, and this gentleman would always go half- 
a-crown with me ; and so all the while he sate on my hand he 
very honestly '■gave the sign ' so that I was always sure to 
lose. I afterwards discovered it, but of all the money that 
ever I was cheated of in my life, none ever vexed me so as 
what I lost by his occasion." ^ 

There is no need to pursue the controversy further. 
It is still unsettled. 

Parker's Reproof, published in 1673, is less argu- 
mentative and naturally enough more personal than 
the EcdesiasUcal PoUtie. Any use I now make of it 
will be purely biographical. Let us see Andrew 
Marvell depicted by an angry parson — not in passages 
of mere abuse, as e.g. " Thou dastard Craven, thou 
Swacl, thou Mushroom, thou coward in heart, word 
and deed, thou Judas, thou Crocodile " ; for epithets 
such as these are of no use to a biographer — but in 
places where Marvell is at least made to sit for the 
portrait, however ill-natured. 

" And if I would study revenge I could easily have requited 
you with the Novels of a certain Jack Gentleman, that was 
born of pure parents and bred among cabin-boys, and sent 
from school to the University and from the University to the 
Gaming Ordinaries, but the young man, being easily rooked 
by the old Gamesters, he was sent abroad to gain courage and 
experience, and beyond sea saw the Bears of Berne and the 
large race of Capons at Geneva, and a great many fine sights 
beside, and so returned home as accomplished as he went out, 
tries his fortune once more at the Ordinaries, plays too high 
for a gentleman of his private condition, and so is at length 
cheated of all at Picquet." ..." And now to conclude ; is it 
notasadthing that a well-bred and fashionable gentleman that 
has frequented Ordinaries, that has worn Perukes and Muffs 
and Pantaloons and was once Master of a Watch, that has 

1 Grosart, vol. iii. p. 198. 



170 ANDREW MARVELL [chai>. 

travelled abroad and seen as many men and countries as the 
famous Vertuosi, Sorbier and Coriat, that has heard the City 
Lions roar, that has past the Alps and seen all the Tredescin 
rarities and old- stones of Italy, that has sat in the Porphyria 
Chair at Rome, that can describe the methods of the Elections 
of Popes and tell stories of the tricks of Cardinals, that has 
been employed in Embassies abroad and acquainted with In- 
trigues of State at home, that has read Plays and Histories 
and Gazettes ; that I say a Gentleman thus accomplished and 
embellished within and without and all over, should ever live 
to that unhappy dotage as at last to dishonour his grey hairs 
and his venerable age with such childish and impotent endea- 
vours at wit and buffoonery." — {Reproof, pp. 270, 274-5.) ^ 

Marvell was very little over fifty years of his age 
at this time, nor is Parker's portrait to be regarded 
as truthful in any other particular — yet something 
of a man's character may be discovered by noticing 
the way he is abused by those who want to abuse him. 

Marvell, though no orator, or even debater, was the 
stuff of which controversialists are made. In a letter, 
printed in the Duke of Portland's papers, and dated 
May 3, 1673, he writes : — 

" Dr. Parker will be out the next week. I have seen it — 
already three hundred and thirty pages and it will be much 
more. (It was five hundred twenty-eight pages.) I perceive 
by what I have read that it is the rudest book, one or other, 

1 For a still more unfriendly sketch of Andrew Marvell by 
the same spiteful hand, see Parker's History of his Oion Time, 
a posthumous work, first published in Latin in 1726, and in 
an English Translation by Thomas Newlin in 1727. This book 
contains an interesting enumeration of the numerous con- 
spiracies against the life and throne of Charles the Second 
during the earlier part of his reign, a panegyric upon Archbishop 
Sheldon and plentiful abuse of Andrew Marvell. Parker died 
in unhappy circumstances (see Macaulay's History, vol. ii. p. 205), 
but he left behind him a pious nonjuring son, and his grandson 
founded the famous publishing firm at Oxford. 



v.] "THE REHEARSAL TRANSPROSED " 171 

that ever was published, I may say since the first invention of 
printing. Although it handles me so roughly, yet I am not 
at all auiated by it. But I must desire the advice of some 
few friends to tell me whether it will be proper for me and in 
what way to answer it. However I will for mine own private 
satisfaction forthwith draw up an answer that shall have as 
much of sp)irit and solidity in it as my ability will afford and 
the age we live in will endure. I am, if I may say it with 
reverence, drawn in I hope by a good Providence to inter- 
meddle on a noble and high argument. But I desire that all 
the discourse of my friends may run as if no answer ought to 
be expected to so scurrilous a book." — (Hist. MSS. Comm., 
Portland Papers, iii. 337.) 

The title-page of the Second Part of the Rehearsal 
Transprosed is a curiosity : — 

THE 

REHEARSALL 
TRANSPROS'D: 

The Second Part. 

Occasioned by Two Letters : The first Printed 
by a nameless Author, Intituled, A 
Reproof, etc. 

The Second Letter left for me at a Friends 
House, Dated Nov. 3, 1673. Subscribed 
J. G. and concluding with these words ; 
If thou darest to Print or Publish any 
Lie or Libel against Doctor Parker, By 
the Eternal God I will cut thy Throat. 

Answered by Andrew Marvel. 

LONDON, 

Printed for Nathaniel Ponder at the Peacock 
in Chancery Lane near Fleet-Street, 1673. 



172 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

The Second Part is an exceedingly witty tliongh too 
lengthy a performance. Marvell's ''companion pic- 
ture" of Parker is full of matter, and of the very 
spirit of the times. Some of it must be given: — 

" But though he came of a good mother, he had a very ill 
sire. He was a man bred toward the Law, and betook him- 
self, as his best practice, to be a sub-committee-man, or, as 
the stile ran, one of the Assistant Committee in Northami^ton- 
shire. In the rapine of that employment, and what he got by 
picking the teeth of his masters, he sustain'd himself till he 
had raked together some little estate. And then, being a 
man for the purpose, and that had begun his fortune out of 
the sequestration of the estates of the King's Party, he, to 
perfect it the more, proceeded to take away their lives ; not 
in the hot and military way (which diminishes always the 
offence), but in the cooler blood and sedentary execution of 
an High Court of Justice. Accordingly he was prefei'r'd to 
be one of that number that gave sentence against the three 
Lords, Capel, Holland, and Hamilton, who were beheaded. 
By this learning in the Law he became worthy of the degree 
of a Serjeant, and sometimes to go the Circuit, till for mis- 
demeanor he was petition'd against. But for a taste of his 
abilities, and the more to reingratiate himself, he printed, in 
the year 1650, a very remarkable Book, called ' The Govern- 
ment of the People of England, precedent and present the 
same. Ad suhscribentes confirmandum, Dubitantes informan- 
dum, Opponentes convincendum ; and underneath Mitlta 
videntur quae non sunt, multa sunt quae non videntur. 
Under that ingraven two hands joyn'd, with the motto, Ut 
uniamur; and beneath a sheaf of arrows, with this device. 
Vis unita fortior ; and to conclude, Concordia parvae res 
crescunt discordia dilahuntur.' A most hieroglyphical title, 
and suificient to have supplied the mantlings and atchieve- 
ments of the family ! By these parents he was sent to Oxford, 
with intention to breed him up to the ministry. There in a 
short time he enter'd himself into the company of some young 
students who were used to fast and pray weekly together ; 
but for their refection fed sometimes on broth, from whence 



v.] "THE KEHEARSAL TRANSPEOSED " 173 

they were commonly called Grewellers ; only it was obsei'ved 
that he was wont still to put more graves than all the rest in 
his porridge. And after that he pick'd acquaintance not only 
with the brotherhood at Wadhain Colledge, but with the sister- 
hood too, at another old Elsibeth's, one Elizabeth Hampton's, 
a plain devout woman, where he train'd himself up in hearing 
their sermons and prayers, receiving also the Sacrament in the 
house, till he had gain'd such proficience, that he too began to 
exercise in that Meeting, and was esteem'd one of the pre- 
ciousest young men in the University. But when thus, after 
several years' approbation, he was even ready to have taken 
the charge, not of an ' admiring drove or heard,' as he now 
calls them, but of a flock upon him, by great misfortune the 
King came in by the miraculous providence of God, influenc- 
ing the distractions of some, the good affections of others, and 
the weariness of all towards that happy Restauration, after so 
many sufferings, to his regal crown and dignity. Neverthe- 
less he broke not off yet from his former habitudes ; and 
though it were now too late to obviate this inconvenience, yet 
he persisted as far as in him was — that is, by praying, cabal- 
ling, and discoursing — to obstruct the restoring of the epis- 
copal government, revenues, and authority. Insomiich that, 
finding himself discountenanced on those accounts by the then 
Warden of Wadham, he shifted coUedges to Trinity, and, 
when there, went away without his degree, scrupling, for- 
sooth, the Subscription then required. From thence he came 
to London, where he spent a considerable time in creeping 
into all corners and companies, horoscoping up and down con- 
cerning the duration of the Government ; not considering 
anything as best, but as most lasting and most profitable. 
And after having many times cast a figure, he at last satisfyed 
himself that the Episcopal (Government would endure as long 
as this King lived ; and from thence forward cast about how 
to be admitted into the Church of England, and find the high- 
way to her preferments. In order to this he daily enlarged, 
not only his conversation, but his conscience, and was made 
free of some of the town-vices ; imagining, like Muleasses 
King of Tunis (for I take witness that on all occasions I treat 
him rather above his quality than otherwise), that by hiding 



174 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

himself among the onions, he should escape being traced by 
his perfumes. Ignorant and mistaken man, that thought it 
necessary to part with any virtue to get a living; or that the 
Church of England did not require and incourage more 
sobriety than he could ever be guilty of ; whereas it hath 
alwayes been fruitful of men who, together with obedience to 
that discipline, have lived to the envy of the Xonconformists 
in their conversation, and without such could never either 
have been preserved so long, or after so long a dissipation 
have ever recover'd. But neither was this yet, in his opinion, 
sufficient ; and therefore he resolv'd to try a shorter path, 
which some few men had trod not unsuccessfully ; that is, to 
print a Book ; if that would not do, a second ; if not that, a 
third of an higher extraction, and so forward, to give experi- 
ment against their former party of a keen stile and a ductile 
judgment. His first proof-piece was in the year 1665, the 
Tenlamina Physico-Theologicn ; a tedious transcript of his 
common-place book, wherein there is very little of his own, 
but the arrogance and the unparalleled ceusoriousness that he 
exercises over all other Writers. When he had cook'd up 
these musty collections, he makes his first invitation to his 
'old acquaintance ' my lord Archbishop of Canterbury, who 
had never seen before nor heard of him. But I must confess 
he furbishes-iip his Grace in so glorious an Epistle, that had 
not my Lord been long since proof against the most spiritual 
flattery, the Dedication only, without ever reading the Book, 
might have serv'd to have fix'd him from that instant as his 
favourite. Yet all this I perceive did not his work, but his 
Grace was so unmindful, or rather so prudent, that the gentle- 
man thought it necessary to spur-up again the next year with 
another new Book, to show more plainly what he would be 
at. This he dedicates to Doctor Bathurst ; and to evidence 
from the very Epistle that he was ready to renounce that 
very education, the civility of which he is so tender of as to 
blame me for disordering it, he picks occasion to tell him : 
' to your prevailing advice. Sir, do I owe my first rescue from 
the chains and fetters of an unhappy education.' But in the 
Book, which he calls ' A free and impartial Censure of the 
Platonick Philosophy ' (censure 'tis sure to be, whatsoever he 



v.] "THE REHEARSAL TRANSPROSED " 176 

writes), he speaks out, and demonstrates himself ready and 
equipp'd to surrender not only the Cause, but betray his 
Party without making any conditions for them, and to ap- 
pear forthwith himself in the head of the contrary interest. 
Which, supposing the dispute to be just, yet in him was so 
mercenary, that none would have descended to act his part 
but a divine of fortune. And even lawyers take themselves 
excused from being of counsel for the King himself, in a cause 
where they have been entertain'd and instructed by their 
client. But so flippant he was and forward in this book, that 
in despight of all chronology, he could introduce Plato to 
inveigh against Calvin, and from the Platoniques he could 
miraculously hook-in a Discourse against the Nonconformists. 
(Cens. Plat. Phil., pp. 26, 27, 28, etc.) After this feat of 
activity he was ready to leap over the moon ; no scruple of 
conscience could stand in his way, and no preferment seemed 
too high for him; for about this time, I find that having 
taken a turn at Cambridge to qualifie himself, he was received 
within doors to be my Lord Archbishop's other chaplain, and 
into some degree of favour ; which, considering the difference 
of their humours and ages, was somewhat surprizing. But 
whether indeed, in times of heat and faction, the most tem- 
perate spirits may sometimes chance to take delight in one 
that is spightful, and make some use of him ; or whether it 
be that even the most grave and serious persons do for relaxa- 
tion divert themselves willingly by whiles with a creature 
that is unlucky, mimical, and gamesome, — so it was. And 
thenceforward the nimble gentleman danced upon bell-ropes, 
vaulted from steeple to steeple, and cut capers out of one 
dignity to another. Having thus dexterously stuck his groat 
in Lambeth wainscot, it may easily be conceived he would be 
unwilling to lose it; and therefore he concern'd himself 
highly, and even to jealousie, in upholding now that palace, 
which, if falling, he would out of instinct be the first should 
leave it. His Majesty about that time labouring to effect his 
constant promises of Indulgence to his people, the Author 
therefore walking with his own shadow in the evening, took 
a great fright lest all were agoe. And in this conceit being 
resolv'd to make good his figure, and that one government 



176 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

should not last any longer than the other, he set himself to 
write those dangerous Books which I have now to do with ; 
wherein he first makes all that he will to be Law, and then 
whatsoever is Law to be Divinity." i 

The Second Part is not all raillery. There is 
much wisdom in it and a trace of Machiavelli : — 

" But because you are subject to misconstrue even true 
English, I will explain my self as distinctly as I can, and as 
close as possible, what is mine own opinion in this matter of 
the magistrate and government ; that, seeing I have blamed 
you where I thought you blame-worthy, you may have as 
fair hold of me Loo, if you can find where to fix your accusa- 
tion. 

" The power of the magistrate does most certainly issue from 
the divine authority. The obedience due to that power is by 
divine command ; and subjects are bound, both as men and as 
Christians, to obey the magistrate actively in all things where 
their duty to God intercedes not, and however passively, that 
is, either by leaving their couutrey, or if they cannot do that 
(the magistrate, or the reason of their own occasions hindring 
them), then by suffering patiently at home, without giving 
the least publick disturbance. But the dispute concerning 
the magistrate's power ought to be superfluous ; for that it is 
certainly founded upon his commission from God, and for the 
most part sufficiently fortified with all humane advantages. 
There are few soveraign princes so abridged, but that, if they 
be not contented, they may envy their own fortune. But the 
modester question (if men will needs be medling with matters 
above them) would be, how far it is advisable for a j)rince to 
exert and push the rigour of that power which no man can 
deny him ; for princes, as they derive the right of succession 
from their ancestors, so they inherit from that ancient and 
illustrious extraction a generosity that runs in the blood above 
the allay of the rest of mankind. And being moreover at so 
much ease of honour and fortune, that they are free from the 
gripes of avarice and twinges of ambition, they are the more 

1 Grosart, vol. iii. p. 284. 



v.] "THE REHEARSAL TRANSPROSED" 177 

disposed to an universal benignity toward their subjects. 
What prince that sees so many millions of men, either labour- 
ing industriously toward his revenue, or adventuring their lives 
in his service, and all of them performing his commands with 
a religious obedience, but conceives at the same time a re- 
lenting tenderness over them, whereof others out of the 
narrowness of their minds cannot be capable ? But whoever 
shall cast his eye thorow the history of all ages, will find that 
nothing has alwayes succeeded better with princes then the 
clemency of government ; and that those, on the contrary, 
wh^ have taken tlie sanguinary course, have been unfortunate 
to themselves and the people, the consequences not being 
separable. For whether that royal and magnanimous gentle- 
ness spring from a propensity of their nature, or be acquired 
and confirmed by good and prudent consideration, it draws 
along with it all the effects of Policy. The wealth of a shep- 
herd depends upon the multitude of his flock, the goodness of 
their pasture, and the quietness of their feeding ; and princes, 
whose dominion over mankind resembles in some measure tliat 
of men over other creatures, cannot expect any considerable 
increase to themselves, if by continual terrour they amaze, 
shatter, and hare their people, driving them into woods, and 
running them upon precipices. If men do but compute how 
charming an efficacy one word, and more, one good action has 
from a superior upon those under him, it can scarce be 
reckon'd how powerful a magick there is in a j)rince who 
shall, by a constant tenour of humanity in government, go on 
daily gaining upon the affections of his people. There is not 
any privilege so dear, but it may be extorted from subjects by 
good usage, and by keeping them alwayes up in their good 
humour. I will not say what one prince may compass within 
his own time, or what a second, though surely much may be 
done ; but it is enough if a great and durable design be accom- 
plish'd in the third life ; and supposing an hereditary succes- 
sion of any three taking up still where the other left, and 
dealing still in that fair and tender way of management, it is 
impossible but that, even without reach or intention upon the 
prince's part, all should fall into his hand, and in so short a 
time the very memory or thoughts of any such thing as 



178 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. v. 

publick liberty would, as it were by consent, expire and be 
for ever extinguish'd. So that whatever the power of the 
magistrate be in the institution, it is much safer for them not 
to do that with the left hand which they may do with the 
right, nor by an extraordinary, what they may effect by the 
ordinary, way of government. A prince that goes to the top 
of his power is like him that shall go to the bottom of his 
treasure." ^ 

And as for the "common people" he has this to 
say: — 

" Yet neither do they want the use of reason, and perhaps 
their aggregated judgment discerns most truly the errours of 
government, forasmuch as they are the first, to be sure, that 
smart under them. In this only they come to be short- 
sighted, that though they know the diseases, they understand 
not the remedies ; and though good patients, they are ill 
physicians. The magistrate only is authorized, qualified, and 
capable to make a just and effectual Reformation, and espe- 
cially among the Ecclesiasticks. For in all experience, as far 
as I can remember, they have never been forward to save the 
prince that labour. If they had, there would have been no 
Wickliffe, no Husse, no Luther in history. Or at least, upon 
so notable an emergency as the last, the Church of Rome 
would then in the Council of Trent have thought of rectifying 
itself in good earnest, that it might have recover'd its ancient 
character ; whereas it left the same divisions much wider, and 
the Christian people of the world to suffer, Protestants under 
Popish governors. Popish under Protestants, rather than let 
go any point of interested ambition." ^ 

1 Grosart, vol. iii. p. 370. 2 n^id., p, 382. 



CHAPTER VI 

LAST YEARS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 

Marvell's last ten years in the House of Commons 
were made miserable by the passionate conviction that 
there existed in high quarters of the State a deep, 
dangerous, and well-considered plot to subvert the 
Protestant faith and to destroy by armed force Parlia- 
mentary Government in England. Marvell was not 
the victim of a delusion. Such a plot, plan, or purpose 
undoubtedly existed, though, as it failed, it is now 
easy to consider the alarm it created to have been 
exaggerated. 

Marvell was, of all public men then living, the one 
most deeply imbued with the spirit of our free con- 
stitution. Its checks and balances jumped with his 
humour. His nature was without any taint of 
fanaticism, nor was he anything of the doctrinaire. 
He was neither a Richard Baxter nor a John Locke. 
He had none of the pure Erastianism of Selden, 
who tells us in his inimitable, cold-blooded way that 
"a, King is a King men have made for their own 
sakes, for quietness' sake." '"Just as in a family one 
man is appointed to buy the meat," and that " there 
is no such thing as spiritual jurisdiction ; all is civil, 
the Church's is the same with the Lord Mayor's. The 
Pope he challenges jurisdiction over all ; the Bishops 
they pretend to it as well as he ; the Presbyterians 
they would have it to themselves, but over whom is 
all this, the poor layman " (see Selden's Table Talk). 
179 



180 ANDEEW MARVELL [chap. 

This may be excellent good sense but it does not 
represent Marvell's way of looking at things. He 
thought more nobly of both church and king. 

In Marvell's last book, his famous pamphlet " An 
Account of the Groioth of Popery and Arbitrary Govern- 
ment in England," printed at Amsterdam and recom- 
mended to the reading of all English Protestants, 1678, 
which made a prodigious stir and (it is sad to think) 
paved the way for the ''Popish Plot," Marvell sets 
forth his view of our constitution in language as lofty 
as it is precise. I know no passage in any of our insti- 
tutional writers of equal merit. 

" For if first we consider the State, the kings of England 
rule not upon the same terms with those of our neighbour 
nations, who, having by force or by address usurped that due 
share which their people had in the government, are now for 
some ages in the possession of an arbitrary power (which yet 
no prescription can make legal) and exercise it over their 
persons and estates in a most tyrannical manner. But here 
the subjects retain their proportion in the Legislature ; the 
very meanest commoner of England is represented in Parlia- 
ment, and is a party to those laws by which the Prince is 
sworn to govern himself and his people. No money is to be 
levied but by the common consent. No man is for life, limb, 
goods, or liberty, at the Sovereign's discretion : but we have 
the same right (modestly understood) in our propriety that 
the prince hath in his regality : and in all cases where the 
King is concerned, we have our just remedy as against any 
private person of the neighbourhood, in the Courts of West- 
minster Hall or in the High Court of Parliament. His very 
Prerogative is no more than what the Law has determined. 
His Broad Seal, which is the legitimate stamp of his pleasure, 
yet is no longer currant, than upon the trial it is found to be 
legal. He cannot commit any person by his particular warrant. 
He cannot himself be witness in any cause : the balance of 
publick justice being so delicate, that not the hand only but 
even the breath of the Prince would turn the scale. Nothing 



VI.] LAST YEARS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 181 

is left to the King's will, but all is subjected to his authority : 
by which means it follows that he can do no wrong, nor can 
he receive wrong ; and a King of England keeping to these 
measiires, may without arrogance, be said to remain the onely 
intelligent Ruler over a rational People. In recompense there- 
fore and acknowledgment of so good a Government under his 
influence, his person is most sacred and inviolable ; and what- 
soever excesses are committed against so high a trust, nothing 
of them is imputed to him, as being free from the necessity or 
temptation; but his ministers only are accountable for all, 
and must answer it at their perils. He hath a vast revenue 
constantly arising from the hearth of the Householder, the 
sweat of the Labourer, the rent of the Farmer, the industry 
of the Merchant, and consequently out of the estate of the 
Gentleman: a large competence to defray the ordinary ex- 
pense of the Crown, and maintain its lustre. And if any 
extraordinary occasion happen, or be but with any probable 
decency pretended, the whole Land at whatsoever season of 
the year does yield him a plentiful harvest. So forward are 
his people's affections to give even to superfluity, that a 
forainer (or Englishman that hath been long abroad) would 
think they could neither will nor chuse, but that the asking 
of a supply were a meer formality, it is so readily granted. He 
is the fountain of all honours, and has moreover the distri- 
bution of so many profitable offices of the Household, of the 
Revenue, of State, of Law, of Religion, of the Navy and (since 
his present Majestie's time) of the Army, that it seems as if 
the Nation could scarce furnish honest men enow to supply 
all those imployments. So that the Kings of England are in 
nothing inferiour to other Princes, save in being more abridged 
from injuring their own subjects : but have as large afield as 
any of external felicity, wherein to exercise their own virtue, 
and so reward and incourage it in others. In short, there 
is nothing that comes nearer in Government to the Divine 
Perfection, than where the Monarch, as with us, injoys a 
capacity of doing all the good imaginable to mankind, under 
a disability to all that is evil."^ 



1 Grosart, vol. iv. p. 248. 



182 ANDKEW MARVELL [chap. 

This was the constitution which Marvell, whose 
means of information were great and whose curiosity- 
was insatiable, believed to be in danger. No wonder 
he was agitated. 

The politics in which Marvell was immersed during 
his last years are difficult to unravel and still more 
difficult to illuminate, for they had their dim origin 
in the secret thoughts and wavering purposes of the 
king. 

Charles the Second, like many another Englishman 
guiltless of Stuart blood in his veins, was mainly 
governed by his dislikes, his pleasures, and his financial 
necessities. To suppose, as some hasty moralisers have 
done, that Charles cared for nothing but his women is 
to misread his character. He had many qualifications 
to be the chief magistrate of a nation of shopkeepers. 
He was ever alive to the supreme importance of English 
trade upon the high seas. His thoughts were often 
turned in the direction of the Indies, east and west. 
He took a constant, though not always an honest, 
interest in the navy. He hated Holland for more 
reasons than one, but among these reasons was his 
hatred of England's most formidable and malicious 
trade competitor. He also disliked her arid and ugly 
Protestantism, and blood being thicker than water, 
he hated Holland for what he considered her shabby 
treatment of his youthful nephew, whose ultimate 
destiny was happily hidden from Whitehall. Among 
Charles's many dislikes must be included the Anglican 
bishops, who had prevented him from keeping his 
word, and foiled his purpose of a wide toleration. He 
envied his brother of France the wide culture, the 
literature and art of Catholicism. He regretted the 
Reformation, and would have been best pleased to 
see the Ensrlish Church in communion with Rome and 



VI.] LAST YEARS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS l;^:] 

in possession of " Anglican liberties " akin to those 
enjoyed by the Gallican Church. Charles was also 
jealous of Louis the Fourteenth, and in many moods 
had no mind to play perpetually a second fiddle. He 
longed for a navy to sweep the seas, for an army strong 
enough to keep his Parliament in check, and for liberty 
for himself and for all those of his subjects who were so 
minded, to hear Mass on Sundays. Behind, and above, 
and always surrounding these desires and dislikes, was 
an ever-present, ever-pressing need for money. Like 
a royal Becky Sharp, Charles might have found it 
easy to be a patriotic king on five millions a year. 

The king was his own Foreign Minister, and being 
what he was, and swayed by the considerations I have 
imperfectly described, his foreign policy was neces- 
sarily tortuous and perplexing. As Ranke says, 
" Charles was capable of proposing offensive alliances 
to the three neighbouring powers, to the Dutch against 
France, to the French against Spain and Holland, to 
the Spaniards against France to the detriment of Hol- 
land, but in these propositions two fundamental views 
always recur — demands for money, and assurance of 
world-wide commerce for England."^ 

Charles first allowed Sir William Temple, a cool, 
prudent man, to form, in a famous five days' negotia- 
tion, the defensive treaty with Holland, which, after 
Sweden had joined it, became known as the Triple 
Alliance (1668). This alliance had for its objects 
mutual promises between the contracting parties to 
come to each other's assistance by sea and land if 
attacked by any power (France being here intended), to 
force Spain to make peace with France on the terms 
already offered, and to compel France to keep those 
terms when agreed to by Spain. 

1 Ranke's History of England, vol. iii. p. 471. 



184 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

The Triple Alliance was not only very popular in 
England, but was good diplomacy, for it was quite 
within the range of practical politics that France and 
Holland might have combined against England; nor 
could it easily be maintained that the alliance was 
hostile to France, as it provided that Spain should 
be forced to accept the terms France had already 
proposed. 

What wrecked the Triple Alliance and prepared the 
way for the secret Treaty of Dover (1670), was the 
impossibility of settling those religious difficulties 
which, despite the Act of Uniformity, were more 
rampant than ever. The king wanted to patch up 
peace, and to secure some working plan of comprehen- 
sion or composu.re, under cover of which the Catholic 
religion should be tolerated and Presbyterianism 
formally recognised. But, king though he was, he 
could not get his way. The Church and the House of 
Commons, full as the latter was of his pimps and 
pensioners, were as obstinate as mules in this matter 
of toleration. They would neither favour Papists nor 
Dissenters, protested against Indulgences as unconsti- 
tutional, and clamoured for a rigorous administration 
of that penal legislation against Nonconformists which 
they had purchased with so many and such lavish 
supplies. As a matter of fact, these penal laws were 
very fitfully enforced. In London they were often 
totally disregarded, and we read of congregations 
numbering two thousand openly attending Presby- 
terian services. The Lord Mayor for the time being 
took his orders direct from the king. 

What was Charles to do ? After the fall of Claren- 
don, the king's favourite privy councillors, called the 
" Cabal," because the initial letters of their names 
formed a word which for some time previously had 



VI.] LAST YEARS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 185 

been in common use, represent only too faithfully the 
confusion and corruption of the times. Clifford was a 
zealous Roman, Arlington a cautious one, Buckingham 
a free-thinker and mocker, friendly to France and on 
good terms with the more advanced English sectaries ; 
Ashley made no pretence to be a Christian, but 
favoured philosophic toleration ; whilst Lauderdale, 
one of the most learned ministers that ever sat in 
council (so Ranke says^), was, as a matter of pro- 
fession, a Presbyterian, but in reality a man wholly 
and slavishly devoted to the king's interests, and 
prepared at any moment to pour into the kingdom 
soldiers from Scotland to purge or suppress all Free 
Institutions. 

Irritated, disgusted, thwarted, aiid annoyed, the 
king, acting, it well may be, under the influence of 
his accomplished sister, the beautiful and ill-fated 
Duchess of Orleans, struck up, to use Marvell's own 
words, " an invisible league with France." The nego- 
tiations were either by word of mouth or by letters 
which have been burnt. Dr. Lingard in his history 
gives an interesting account of this mysterious trans- 
action. Two things are apparent as the objects of the 
Treaty of Dover. The Dutch Republic is to be de- 
stroyed, and the cause of Catholicism in England is to 
be promoted and maintained. It was this latter object 
that seems most to have excited the hopes of the 
Duchess of Orleans. A woman's hand is traceable 
throughout. Charles promised to profess himself 
openly a Roman Catholic at the time that should 
appear to be most expedient, and subsequently to that 
profession he was to join with Louis in making war 
upon the Dutch Republic. At the date of this be- 
wildering agreement, it was high treason by statu.te 
1 Ranke, vol. iii. p. 520. 



186 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

even to say that Charles was a Roman Catholic. In 
case the king's public conversion should lead to dis- 
turbances, Louis promised an "aid " of two millions of 
livres and an armed force of six thousand men. He 
also agreed to pay the whole cost of the Dutch War 
on land, and to contribute thirty men-of-war to the 
English fleet. Holland once crushed, England's share 
of the plunder was to be Walcheren, Sluys, and 
Cadsand. A remarkable conversion ! It is difficult 
to suppose that either Charles or Louis Avere quite 
serious over this part of the business. Yet there it is. 
The Catholic provisions of the secret Treaty of Dover 
were only known to Clifford, whose soul was fired by 
them, and to Arlington, who did not share the con- 
fident hopes of his co-religionist. Clifford thought 
there were thousands of Englishmen ''of light and 
leading" among the English Catholics who would be 
both willing and able to assume the burdens of the 
State and to rally round a Catholic king. Arlington 
thought otherwise. 

The king's public conversion never took place. No 
hint was given of any such impending event. Parlia- 
ment met on the 24th of October 1670, and after 
hearing a good deal about the Triple Alliance and 
voting large sums of money, was prorogued in April 
1671, and did not meet again till February 1673. 

To pick a quarrel with the Dutch was never difficult. 
Marvell tells us how it was done. " A sorry yacht, 
but bearing the English Jack, in August 1671 sails 
into the midst of the Dutch fleet, singles out the 
Admiral, shooting twice as they call it, sharp upon 
him. Which must sure have appeared as ridiculous 
and unnatural as for a lark to dare the hobby." The 
Dutch admiral asking " Why," was told " because he 
and his whole fleet had failed to strike sail to his small 



VI.] LAST YEARS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 187 

craft." The Dutch commander then ''civilly excused 
it as a matter of the first instance, and in which he 
could have no instruction, therefore proper to be 
referred to their masters, and so they parted. The 
yacht having thus acquitted itself, returned fraught 
with the quarrel she was sent for." ^ Surinam was a 
perpetual casus belli. Some offence against the law 
of nations was always happening there. A third 
matter, very full of gunpowder, was made great use 
of by the promoters of the war already agreed upon. 
A picture had been hung at Dort representing De Witt 
sailing up the Medway very much in the manner 
described in Marvell's poem. Medals also had been 
struck and distributed in commemoration of the same 
event. War was declared against Holland by England 
and France in March 1672. The Declaration of War 
was preceded by the Declaration of Indulgence, 
whereby, wrote Marvell, " all the penal laws against 
Papists for which former Parliaments had given so 
many supplies, and against Nonconformists for which 
this Parliament had paid more largely, were at one 
instant suspended in order to defraud the nation of all 
that religion which they had so dearly purchased, and 
for which they ought at least, the bargain being broke, 
to have been reimbursed." ^ 

The unconstitutional suspension of bad laws put 
lovers of freedom in a predicament. Marvell was 
what he calls a " composure," that is a " comprehen- 
sion," man. In the GroivtJi of Popery he sorrowfully 
admits that it is the gravest reproach of human wisdom 
that no man seems able or willing to find out the due 
temper of Government in divine matters. 

1 Grosart, vol. iv. {Growth of Popery), p. 275. 

2 Ibid., p. 279. 



188 ANDREW MAEVELL [chap. 

" Insomuch that it is no great adventure to say, that the 
world was better ordered under the ancient monarchies and 
commonwealths, that the number of virtuous men was then 
greater, and that the Christians found fairer quarter under 
those than among themselves, nor hath there any advantage 
accrued unto mankind from that most perfect and practical 
model of humane society, except the speculation of a better 
way to future happiness, concerning which the very guides 
disagree, and of those few that follow, it will suffer no man to 
pass without paying at their turnpikes." (Vol. iv. p. 280.) 

The French Alliance made the war, though with 
Holland, unpopular. Writers had to be hired to 
defend it. France was supposed to look on with much 
composure as her two maritime competitors battered 
each other's fleets. At sea the honours were divided 
between the Dutch and the English. On land Louis 
had it all his own way. Besides, rumours got abroad 
of an uncomfortable plot to restore Popery. Jesuits 
seemed to abound. Eoman Catholics asserted them- 
selves, the laws being suspended. An army was col- 
lected at Blackheath. The Treasury was closed. 
Charles had been badly bled by the goldsmiths or 
bankers, who had charged him £12 per cent. ; but in 
commercial centres Acts of Bankruptcy are seldom 
popular, and though the bankers were compelled to be 
content with £6 per cent., the closing of the Treasury 
brought ruin into many homes. 

When Parliament met in February 1673, its temper 
was bad. It would have nothing to do with the 
Declaration of Indulgence, and though the king had 
told them, in the round set terms he could so well 
command, that he was resolved to stick to his declara- 
tion, he had to give way and to see the Ilouse busy 
itself with a Test Bill that drove all Roman Catholics, 
from the Duke of York (who had " gone over " in the 



VI.] LAST YEARS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 189 

spring of 1672) downwards, out of office. The only- 
effect of Charles's policy was to mitigate the hostility 
of the House of Commons to Protestant Dissenters, 
and to drive it to concentrate its jealousy upon the 
Catholics. Any lurking idea of the king declaring 
himself a Romanist had to be abandoned. His hatred 
of Parliament increased. He lost all sense of shame, 
and frankly became a pensioner of France. In 1676 
he concluded a second secret treaty, whereby both 
Louis and himself bound themselves to enter into no 
engagements with other powers without consent, and 
in case of rebellion within their realms to come to each 
other's assistance. Louis agreed to make Charles an 
annual allowance of a hundred thousand, afterwards 
increased to two hundred thousand livres. This money 
was largely spent in bribing the House of Commons. 
The French ambassador Avas allowed an extra grant of 
a thousand crowns a month to keep a table for hungry 
legislators.-^ Did not Marvell do well to be angry ? 

Some of Marvell's letters belonging to this gloomy 
period are full of interest. 

To William Ramsden, Esq. 

" Nov. 28, 1670. 

" Dear Will, — I need not tell yon I am always thinking 
of you. All that has happened, which is remarkable, since I 
wrote, is as follows : The Lieutenancy of London, chiefly 
Sterlin the Mayor, and Sir J. Robinson, alarmed the King 
continually with the Conventicles there. So the King sent 
them strict and large powers. The Duke of York every 
Sunday would come over thence to look to the peace. To 
say truth, they met in numerous open assemblys, without any 
dread of government. But the train bands in the city, and 

1 See note to Dr. Airy's edition of Burnet's History, vol. ii. 
p. 73. 



190 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

soldiery in Southwark and suburbs, liavassed and abused them 
continually ; they wounded many, and killed some Quakers 
especially, while they took all patiently. Hence arose two 
things of great remark. The Lieutenancy, having got orders 
to their mind, pick out Hays and Jekill, the innocentist of 
the whole party, to show their power on. They offer them 
illegal bonds of five thousand pounds a man, which if they 
would not enter into, they must go to prison. So they were 
committed, and at last (but it is a very long story) got free. 
Some friends engaged for them. The other was the tryal of 
Pen and Mead, quakers, at the Old Baily. The jury not 
finding them guilty, as the Recorder and Mayor would have 
had them, they were kept without meat or drink some three 
days, till almost starved, but would not alter their verdict ; 
so fined and imprisoned. There is a book out which relates 
all the passages, which were very pertinent, of the prisoners, 
but prodigiously barbarous by the Mayor and Recorder. The 
Recorder, among the rest, commended the Spanish Inquisi- 
tion, saying it would never be well till we had something like 
it. The King had occasion for sixty thousand pounds. Sent 
to borrow it of the city. Sterlin, Robinson, and all the rest 
of that faction, were at it many a week, and could not get 
above ten thousand. The fanatics under persecution, served 
his Majesty. The other party, both in court and city, would 
have prevented it But the King protested mony w^ould be 
acceptable. So the King patched up, out of the Chamber, 
and other ways, twenty thousand pounds. The fanatics, of 
all sorts, forty thousand. The King, though against many of 
his council, would have the Parliament sit this twenty-fourth 
of October. He, and the Keeper spoke of nothing but to have 
mony. Some one million three hundred thousand pounds, to 
pay off the debts at interest ; and eight hundred thousand for 
a brave navy next Spring. Both sj^eeches forbid to be printed, 
for the King said very little, and the Keejjer, it was thought, 
too much in his politic simple discourse of foreign affairs. 
The House was thin and obsequious. They voted at first 
they would supply him according to his occasions, Nemine, as 
it was remarked, contradicente ; but few affirmatives, rather a 
silence as of men ashamed and unwilling. Sir R. Howard, 



VI.] LAST YEARS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 191 

Seymour, Temple, Car, and Mollis, openly took leave of their 
former party, and fell to head the King's busyness. There 
is like to be a terrible Act of Conventicles. The Prince of 
Orange here is much made of. The King owes him a great 
deal of mony. The Paper is full. — I am yours," etc. 

The trial of William Penn and William Mead at the 
Old Bailey for a tumultuous assembly, written by 
themselves, may be read in the State Trials, vol. vi. 
The trial was the occasion of Penn's famous remark to 
the Recorder of London, who, driven wellnigh dis- 
tracted by Penn's dialectics, exclaimed, '*If I should 
snffer you to ask questions till to-morrow morning you 
would never be the wiser." "That," replied Penn, 
"would be according as the answers are." 



To William Ramsden, Esq. 

(Undated.) 

" Dear Will, — The Parliament are still proceeding, but 
not much advanced on their eight hundred thousand pounds 
Bill on money at interest, offices, and lands; and the Excise 
Bills valued at four hundred thousand pounds a year. The 
first for the navy, which scarce will be set out. The last to 
be for paying one million three hundred thousand pounds, 
which the King owes at interest, and perhaps may be given 
for four, five, or six years, as the House chances to be in 
humour. But an accident happened which liked to have 
spoiled all : Sir John Coventry having moved for an imposi- 
tion on the playhouses. Sir John Berkenhead, to excuse them, 
sayed they had been of great service to the King. Upon 
which Sir John Coventry desired that gentleman to explain 
whether he meant the men or the women players. Hereupon 
it is imagined, that, the House adjourning from Tuesday before 
till Thursday after Christmas-day, on the very Tuesday night 
of the adjournment, twenty-five of the Duke of Monmouth's 
troop, and some few foot, layed in wait from ten at night till 
two in the morning, by Sulfolk-street, and as he returned 



192 ANDEEW MARVELL [chap. 

from the Cock, where he supped, to his own house, they threw 
him down, and with a knife cut off almost the end of his nose ; 
but companj^ coming made them fearful to finish it, so they 
marched off. Sir-Thomas Sands, lieutenant of the troop, com- 
manded tlie party ; and O'Brian, the Earl of Inchequin's son, 
was a principal actor. The Court hereupon sometimes thought 
to carry it with a high hand, and question Sir John for his 
words, and maintain the action. Sometimes they flagged in 
their counsels. However, the King commanded Sir Thomas 
Clarges, and Sir W. Pultney, to release Wroth and Lake, who 
were two of the actors, and taken. But the night before the 
House met they surrendered them again. The House being 
but sullen the next day, the Court did not oppose adjourning 
for some days longer till it was filled. Then the House went 
upon Coventry's busyness, and voted that they would go uj^on 
nothing else whatever till they had passed a Bill, as they did, 
for Sands, O'Brian, Parry, and Reeves, to come in by the six- 
teenth of February, or else be condenmed, and never to be 
pardoned, but by an express Act of Parliament, and their 
names therein inserted, for fear of being pardoned in some 
general act of grace. Farther of all such actions, for the 
future on any man, felony, without clergy ; and who shall 
otherwise strike or wound any parliament-man, during his 
attendance, or going or coming, imprisonment for a year, 
treble danrages, and incapacity. Tliis Bill having in some 
few days been dispatched to the Lords, the House has since 
gone on in grand Committee upon the first eight hundred 
thousand pounds Bill, but are not yet half way. But now 
the Lords, instead of the sixteenth of February, put twenty- 
five days after the King's royal assent, and that x*egistered in 
their journal ; they disagree in several other things, but adhere 
in that first, which is most material. Adhere, in this place, 
signifies not to be retracted, and excludes a free conference. 
So that this week the Houses will be in danger of splitting, 
witliout much wisdom or force. For considering that Sir 
Thomas Sands was the very person sent to Clarges and 
Pultney, that O'Brian was concealed in the Duke of Mon- 
mouth's lodgings, that Wroth and Lake were bayled at the 
sessions by order from Mr. Attorney, and that all persons and 



VI.] LAST YEARS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 193 

things are perfectly discovered, that act will not be passed 
without great consequence. George's father obliges you much 
in Tangier. Prince Edgar is dying. The Court is at the 
highest pitcli of want and luxury, and the people full of dis- 
content. Remember me to yovirselves." 



To William Ramsden, Esq. 

(Undated.) 

"Dear Will, — I think I have not told you that, on our 
Bill of Subsidy, the Lord Lucas made a fervent bold speech 
against our prodigality in giving, and the weak looseness of 
the government, the King being present; and the Lord Clare 
another to persuade the King that he ought not to be present. 
But all this had little encouragement, not being seconded. 
Copys going about everywhere, one of them was brought into 
the Lords' House, and Lord Lucas was asked whether it was 
his. He sayd part was, and part was not. Thereupon they 
took advantage, and sayed it was a libel even against Lucas 
himself. On this they voted it a libel, and to be burned by 
the hangman. Which was done ; but the sport was, the 
hangman burned the Lords' order with it. I take the last 
quarrel betwixt us and the Lords to be as the ashes of that 
speech. Doubtless you have heard, before this time, how 
Monmouth, Albemarle, Dunbane, and seven or eight gentle- 
men, fought with the watch, and killed a poor bedle. They 
have all got their j^ardons, for Monmouth's sake ; but it is 
an act of great scandal. The King of France is at Dunkirke. 
We have no fleet out, though we gave the Subsidy Bill, 
valued at eight hundred thousand pounds, for that purpose. 
I believe, indeed, he will attempt nothing on us, but leave us 
to dy a natural death. For indeed never had poor nation so 
many complicated, mortal, incurable, diseases. You know 
the Dutchess of York is dead. All gave her for a Papist. I 
think it will be my lot to go on an honest fair employment 
into Ireland. Some have smelt the court of Rome at that 
distance. There I hope I shall be out of the smell of our . . . 
— Yours," etc. 



194 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 



To a Friend in Persia. 

''August 9, 1671. 

" Dear Sir, — I have yours of the 12th of October 1670, 
which was in all respects most welcome to me, except when 
I considered that to write it you endured some pain, for you 
say your hand is not yet recovered. If I could say any thing 
to you towards the advancement of j^our affairs, I could, with 
a better conscience, admit you should spend so much of your 
l^recious time, as you do, upon me. But you know how far 
those things are out of my road, tho', otherwise, most desirous 
in all things to be serviceable to you. God's good providence, 
which hath through so dangerous a disease and so many diiR- 
cultys preserved and restored you, will, I doubt not, conduct 
you to a prosperous issue, and the perfection of your so laud- 
able undertakings. And, under that, your own good genius, 
in conjunction with your brother here, will, I hope, though 
at the distance of England and Persia, in good time operate 
extraordinary effects ; for the magnetism of two souls, rightly 
touched, works beyond all natural limits, and it would be 
indeed too unequal, if good nature should not have at least 
as large a sphere of activity, as malice, envy, and detraction, 
which are, it seems, part of the returns from Gombroon and 
Surat. All I can say to you in that matter is, that you must, 
seeing it will not be better, stand upon your guard ; for in 
this world a good cause signifys little, unless it be as well 
defended. A man may starve at the feast of good conscience. 
My fencing master in Spain, after he had instructed me all he 
could, told me, I remember, thei'e was yet one secret, against 
which there was no defence, and that was, to give the first 
blow. I know your maxim. Qui fesVinat ditescere, non erit 
innocens. Indeed while you preserve that mind, you will 
have the blessing both of God and man. In general I per- 
ceive, and am very glad of it, that by your good management, 
your friends here get ground, and the flint in your adversarys' 
hearts begins to be mollifyed. Now after my usual method, 
leaving to others what relates to busyness, I address myself, 
which is all I am good for, to be your gazettier. I am sorry 
to perceive that mine by the Armenian miscarryed. The' 



VI. J LAST YEARS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 195 

there was nothing material in it, the thoughts of friends are 
too valuable to fall into the hands of a stranger. I wrote the 
last February at large, and wish it a better passage. In this 
perhaps I may interfere something with that, ch using rather 
to repeat than omit. The King having, upon pretence of the 
great preisarations of his neighbours, demanded three hundred 
thousand pounds for his navy (though in conclusion he hath 
not set out any) and that the Parliament should pay his debts, 
which the ministers would never particularize to the House of 
Commons, our House gave several bills. You see how far 
things were stretched, though beyond reason, there being no 
satisfaction how those debts were contracted, and all men 
foreseeing that what was given would not be applyed to dis- 
charge the debts, which I hear are at this day risen to four 
millions, but diverted as formerly. Nevertheless such was 
the number of the constant courtiers increased by the apostate 
patriots, who were bought off, for that turn, some at six, 
others ten, one at fifteen thousand pounds in money, besides 
what offices, lands, and reversions, to others, that it is a 
mercy they gave not away the whole land, and liberty, of 
England. The Earl of Clare made a very bold and rational 
harangue, the King being present, against the King's sitting 
among the Lords, contrary to former precedents, during their 
debates ; but he was not seconded. The King had this 
April prorogued, upon the Houses cavilling, and their harsh 
conferences concerning some bills, the Parliament from this 
April till the 16th of April 1672. Sir John Coventry's Bill 
against Cutting Noses passed, and O'Brian and Sir Thomas 
Sands, not appearing at the Old Baily by the time limited, 
stand attainted and outlawed, without possibility of pardon. 
The Duke of Buckingham is again one hundred and forty 
thousand pounds in debt, and, by this prorogation, his 
creditors have time to tear all his lands in pieces. The 
House of Commons has run almost to the end of their line, 
and are grown extreme chargeable to the King, and odious 
to the people. Lord St. John, Marquess of Westminster's 
son, one of the House of Commons, Sir Robert Howard, 
Sir John Benet, Lord Arlington's brother. Sir William Buck- 
noil, the brewer, all of the House, in fellowship with some 



196 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

others of the city, have farmed the old customs, with the new 
act of Imposition upon Wines, and the Wine Licenses, at 
six hundred thousand pounds a year, to begin this Michael- 
mas. You may be sure they have covenants not to be 
losers. They have signed and sealed ten thousand pounds 
a year more to tlie Duchess of Cleveland, who has likewise 
near ten thousand pounds a year out of the new farm of 
the country excise of Beer and Ale, five thousand pounds 
a year out of the Post Office, and, they say, the reversion 
of all the King's leases, the reversion of places all in 
the Custom House, the green wax, and indeed, what not? 
All prouaotions, spiritual and temporal, pass under her 
cognizance. Buckingham runs out of all with the Lady 
Shrewsbury, by whom he believes he had a son, to whom the 
King stood godfather ; it dyed, young Earl of Coventry, and 
was buryed in the sepulchre of his fathers. The King of 
France made a warlike progi-esse this summer through his 
conquests of Flanders, but kept the peace there, and detains 
still the Dutchy of Lorain, and has stired up the German 
Princes against the free towns. The Duke of Brunswick has 
taken the town of Brunswick ; and now the Bishop of Cullen 
is attacking the city of Colen. We truckle to France in all 
things, to the prejudice of our honour. Barclay is still 
Lieutenant of Ireland ; but he was forced to come over to pay 
ten thousand pounds rent to his Landlady Cleveland. My 
Lord Angier, who bought of Sir George Carteret for eleven 
thousand pounds, the Vice-treasurership of Ireland, worth 
five thousand pounds a year, is, betwixt knavery and foolery, 
turned out. Dutchess of York and Prince Edgar, dead. 
None left but daughters. One Bind, outlawed for a plot to 
take Dublin Castle, and who seized on the Duke of Ormond 
here last year, and might have killed him, a most bold, and 
yet sober fellow, some months ago seized the crown and sceptre 
in the Tower, took them away, and if he had killed the keeper, 
mighthave carried them clear off. He, being taken, astonished 
the King and Court, with the generosity, and wisdom, of 
his answers. He, and all his accomplices, for liis sake, are 
discharged by the King, to the wonder of all. — Yours," etc. 



VI.] LAST YEARS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 197 

To William Ramsden, Esq. 

" June 1672. 

" Dear Will, — Affairs begin to alter, and men talk of a 
j)cace with Holland, and taking them into our protection ; 
and it is my opinion it will be before Michaelmas, for some 
reasons, not fit to write. We cannot have a peace with 
France and Holland both. The Dutch are now brought very- 
low ; but Amsterdam, and some other provinces, are resolved 
to stand out till the last. De-wit is stabbed, and dead of his 
wounds. It was at twelve a clock at night, the 11th of this 
month, as he came from the council at the Hague. Four men 
wounded him with their swords. But his own letter next 
morning to the States says nothing appeared mortal. The 
whole Province of Utrecht is yielding up. No man can con- 
ceive the condition of the State of Holland, in this juncture, 
unless he can at the same time conceive an earthquake, an 
hurricane, and the deluge. France is potent and subtle. 
Here have been several fires of late. One at St. Catherine's, 
which burned about six score or two hundred houses, and 
some seven or eight ships. Another in Bishopsgate-street. 
Another in Crichet Fryars. Another in South wark ; and 
some elsewhere. You may be sure all the old talk is liereupon 
revived. There was the other day, though not on this occa- 
sion, a severe proclamation issued out against all w^ho shall 
vent false news, or discourse ill concerning affairs of state. 
So that in writing to you I run the risque of making a breech 
in the commandment. — Yours," etc. 

The following letter deals witli another matter of 
human concern than politics, for it seeks to condole 
with a father who has lost an only son. 

To Sir John Trott 

(Undated.) 

" Honoured Sir, — I have not that vanity to believe, if you 
weigh your late loss by the common ballance, that any thing I 
can write to you should lighten your resentments : nor if you 
measure things by the rules of Christianity, do I think it 
needful to comfort you iu your duty and your sou's happyness. 



198 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

Only having a great esteem andaffection foryou, andthegrate- 
f ul memory of him that is departed being still green and fresh 
upon my spirit, I cannot forbear to inquire, how you have 
stood the second shock at your sad meeting of friends in the 
country. I know that the very sight of those who have been 
■witnesses of our better fortune, doth but serve to reinforce a 
calamity. I know the contagion of grief and infection of tears, 
and especially when it runs in a blood. And I myself could 
sooner imitate than blame those innocent relentings of nature, 
so that they spring from tenderness only and humanity, not 
from an implacable sorrow. The tears of a family may flow 
together Uke those little drops that compact the rainbow, and 
if they be placed with the same advantage towards Heaven as 
those are to the sun, they too have their splendour ; and like 
that bow, while they unbend into seasonable showers, yet they 
promise, that there shall not be a second flood. But the dis- 
soluteness of grief, the prodigality of sorrow, is neither to be 
indulged in a man's self, nor complyed with in others. If that 
were allowable in these cases, Eli's was the readyest way and 
highest compliment of mourning, who fell back from his seat 
and broke his neck. But neither does that precedent hold. 
For though he had been Chancellor, and in effect King of 
Israel, for so many years (and such men value, as themselves, 
their losses at an higher rate than others), yet, when he heard 
that Israel was overcome, that his two sons Hophni and 
Phineas were slain in one day, and saw himself so without 
hope of issue, and which imbittered it farther, without succes- 
sion to the govern uient, yet he fell not till the news that the 
ark of God was taken. I pray God that we may never have 
the same parallel perfected in our publick concernments. 
Then we shall need all the strength of grace and nature to 
support us. But on a private loss, and sweetened with so 
many circumstances as yours, to be impatient, to be uncom- 
fortable would be to dispute with God. Though an only son 
be inestimable, yet it is like Jonah's sin, to be angry at God 
for the withering of his shadow. Zipporah, though the delay 
had almost cost her husband his life, yet, when he did but 
circumcise her son, in a womanish peevishness reproached 
Moses as a bloody husband. But if God take the son himself, 
but spare the father, shall \ve say that He is a bloody God? 



VI.] LAST YEARS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 199 

He that gave His own son, may He not take oiirs ? It is 
pride that makes a rebel ; and nothing but the over-weening 
of ourselves and our own things that raises us against Divine 
Providence. Whereas Abraham's obedience was better than 
sacrifice. And if God please to accept both, it is indeed a 
farther tryal, but a greater honour. I could say over upon 
this beaten occasion most of those lessons of morality and 
religion which have been so often repeated, and are as soon 
forgotten. We abound with precept, but we want examples. 
You, sir, that have all these things in your memory, and the 
clearness of whose judgment is not to be obscured by any 
greater interposition, should be exemplary to others in your 
own practice. 'Tis true, it is an hard task to learn and teach 
at the same time. And, where yourselves are the experiment, 
it is as if a man should dissect his own body, and read the 
anatomy lecture. But I Avill not heighten the difficulty while 
I advise the attempt. Only, as in difficult things, you would 
do well to make use of all that may strengthen and assist you ; 
the word of God ; the society of good men ; and the books of 
the ancients ; there is one way more, which is by diversion, 
business, and activity ; which are also necessary to be used in 
their season. But I myself, who live to so little purpose, can 
have little autliority or ability to advise you in it, who are a 
person that are and may be much more so, generally useful. 
All that I have been able to do since, hath been to write this 
sorry Elogy of your son, which if it be as good as I could 
wish, it is as yet no indecent employment. However, I know 
you will take any thing kindly from your very affectionate 
friend, and most humble servant." 

Milton died on the 8th of November 1674. Marvell 
remained among the poet's intimate friends until the 
end, and intended to write his life. It is idle to mourn 
the loss of an unwritten book, but Marvell's life of 
Milton would have been a treasure.^ 

1 Marvell's commendatory verses on "Mr. Milton's Paradise 
Lost " (so entitled in the volume of 1681) were first printed in 
the Second Edition (1674) of Milton's great poem. Marvell 
did not agree with Dryden in thinking that Paradise Lost 
would be improved by rhyme, and says so in these verses. 



200 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

Wheii Parliament met on the 13tli of April 1675, 
members found in their places a mock-speecli from 
the throne. They knew the hand that had penned it. 
It was a daring production and ran as follows : — 

His Majesty^ s Most Gracious Speech to Both Houses of 
Parliament. 

"My Lords and Gentlemen, — I told you at our last 
meeting, the winter was the fittest time for business, and truly 
I thought so, till my Lord Treasurer assui*ed me the spring 
was the best season for sallads and subsidies. I hope therefore 
that April will not prove so unnatural a month, as not to 
afford some kind showers on my parched exchequer, which 
gapes for want of them. Some of you, perhaps, will think it 
dangerous to make me too rich ; but I do not fear it ; for I 
promise you faithfully, whatever you give me I will always 
want ; and although in other things my word may be thought 
a slender authority, yet in that, you may rely on me, I will 
never break it. 

" j\Iy Lords and Gentlemen, — I can bear my straits with 
patience; but my Lord Treasurer does protest to me, that the 
revenue, as it now stands, will not serve him and me too. One 
of us must pinch for it, if you do not help me. I must speak 
freely to you : I am under bad circumstances, for besides my 
harlots in service, my reformado concubines lye heavy upon 
me. I have a passable good estate, I confess, but, God's-fish, 
I have a great charge upon 't. Plere 's my Lord Treasurer can 
tell, that all the money designed for next summer's guards 
must, of necessity, he applyed to the next year's cradles and 
swadling-cloths. AVhat shall we do for ships then? I hint 
this only to you, it being your busyness, not mine. I know, 
by experience, I can live without ships. I lived ten years 
abroad without, and never had my health better in my life ; 
but how you will be without, I leave to yourselves to judge, 
and tlierefoi-e hint this only by the bye : I do not insist upon 
it. There 's another thing I must press more earnestly, and 
that is this : — It seems a good part of my revenue will expire 



VI.] LAST YEAKS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 201 

in two or three years, except you will be pleased to continue 
it. I have to say for 't, pray, why did you give me so much as 
you have done, unless you resolve to give on as fast as I call 
for it ? The nation hates you already for giving so much, 
and I '11 hate you too, if you do not give me more. So that 
if you stick not to me, you must not have a friend in England. 
On the other hand, if you will give me the revenue I desire, I 
shall be able to do those things for your I'eligion and liberty, 
that I have had long in my thoughts, but cannot effect them 
without a little more money to carry me through. Therefore 
look to 't and take notice that if you do not make me rich 
enough to undo you, it shall lie at your doors. For my part 
I wash my hands on 't. But that I may gain your good opinion, 
the best way is to acquaint you what I have done to deserve 
it, out of my royal care for your religion and your property. 
For the first, my proclamation is a true picture of my mind. 
He that cannot, as in a glass, see my zeal for the Church of 
England, does not deserve any farther satisfaction, for I 
declare him wilful, abominable, and not good. Some may, 
i:)erhaps, be startled, and cry, how comes this sudden change? 
To which I answer, I am a changling, and that 's sufficient, I 
think. But to convince men farther, that I mean what I say, 
there are these arguments: — 

" First, I tell you so, and you know I never break my 
word. 

" Secondly, My Lord Treasurer says so, and he never 
told a lye in his life. 

" Thirdly, My Lord Lauderdale will undertake it for me ; 
and I should be loath, by any act of mine, he should 
forfeit the credit he has with you. 
" If you desire more instances of my zeal, I have them for 
you. For example, I have converted mj natural sons from 
Popery ; and I may say, without vanity, it was my own 
work, so much the more peculiarly mine than the begetting 
them. Twould do one's heart good to hear how prettily 
George can read already in the Psalter. They are all fine 
children, God bless 'em, and so like me in their under- 
standings. But, as I was saying, I have, to please you, 
given a pension to your favouiite my Lord Lauderdale ; not 



202 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

so much that I thought he wanted it, as that you would 
take it kindly. I have made Carwell dutchess of Portsmouth, 
and marryed her sister to the Earl of Pembroke. I have, 
at my brother's request, sent my Lord Inchequin into Barbary, 
to settle the Protestant Religion among the Moors, and an 
English Interest at Tangier. I have made Crew Bishop of 
Durham, and, at the first word of my Lady Portsmouth, 
Prideaux Bishop of Chichester. I know not, for my part, 
what factious men would have ; but this I am sure of, my 
predecessors never did anything like this, to gain the good 
will of their subjects. So much for your religion, and now 
for your property. My behaviour to the Bankers is a publick 
instance; and the proceedings between Mrs. Hyde and Mrs. 
Sutton for private ones, are such convincing evidences, that 
it will be needless to say any more to 't. 

" I must now acquaint you, that, by my Lord Treasurer's 
advice, I have made a considerable retrenchment upon my 
expenses in candles and charcoal, and do not intend to stop 
there, but will, with your help, look into the late embezzle- 
ments of my dripping-pans and kitchen-stuff ; of which, by 
the way, upon my conscience, neither my Lord Treasurer nor 
my Lord Lauderdale are guilty. I tell you my opinion ; 
but if you should find them dabling in that busyness, I tell 
you plainly, I leave 'em to you ; for, I would have the world 
to know, I am not a man to be cheated. 

"My Lords and Gentlemen, I desire you to believe me 
as you have found me ; and I do solemnly promise you, that 
whatsoever you give me shall be specially managed with the 
same conduct, trust, sincerity, and prudence, that I have ever 
practised, since my happy restoration." ^ 

Mock King's Speeches have often been made, but 
this is the first, and I think still the best of them aU. 

There was no shaking off religion from the debates 
of those days. A new Oaths Bill suddenly appeared 
in the House of Lords, where it gave rise to one of 
the greatest debates that assembly has ever witnessed, 

1 Printed in Captain Thompson's edition, vol. i. p. 432. 



VI.] LAST YEARS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 203 

lasting seventeen days. The bishops were baited by 
the peers with great spirit, and the report of the 
proceedings may still be read with gusto. 

Marvell, in his Growth of Popery, thus describes 
what happened : — 

"While these things were upon the anvil, the 10th of 
November was come for the Parliament's sitting, but that 
was put off till the 13th of April 1675. And in the mean- 
time, which fell out most opportune for the conspirators, 
these counsels were matured, and something further to be 
contrived, that was yet wanting ; the Parliament accordingly 
meeting, and the House of Lords, as well as that of the 
Commons, being in deliberation of several wholesome bills, 
such as the present state of the nation required, the great 
design came out in a bill unexpectedly offered one morning in 
the House of Lords, whereby all such as injoyed any beneficial 
office, or imployment, ecclesiastical, civil, or military, to which 
wasadded privy counsellors, justicesof the peace, and members 
of Parliament, were under a penalty to take the oath, and 
make the declaration, and abhorrence, insuring : — 

' I A. B. do declare, that it is not lawful upon any 

pretence whatsoever to take up arms against the 

King, and that I do abhor that traiterous position 

of taking arms by his authority against his person, 

or against those that are commissioned by him in 

pursuance of such commission. And I do swear, 

that I will not at any time indeavour the alteration 

of the government either in Church or State. So 

help me God.' 

"This same oath had been brought into the House of 

Commons in the plague year at Oxford, to have been imposed 

upon the nation, but there, by the assistance of those very 

same persons that now introduce it, 'twas thrown out, for 

fear of a general infection of the vitals of this kingdom ; 

and though it passed then in a particular bill, known by 

the name of the Five Mile Act, because it only concerned 

the non-conformist preachers, yet even in that, it was 

thoroughly opposed by the late Earl of Southampton, whose 



204 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

judgement might well have been reckoned for the standard 
of prudence and loyalty." ^ 

Of the proposed oath Marvell says, "No Con- 
veyancer could ever in more compendious or binding 
terms have drawn a dissettlement of the whole birth- 
right of England." 

This was no mere legal quibbling. 

" These things are no niceties, or remote considerations 
(though in making of laws, and which must come afterwards 
under construction of judges, durante bene placito, all cases 
are to be put and imagined) but there being an act in Scotland 
for 20,000 men to march into England upon call, and so great 
a body of English soldiery in France, within summons, be- 
sides what foreigners may be obliged by treaty to furnish, 
and it being so fresh in memory, what sort of persons had 
lately been in commission among us, to which add the many 
books then printed by license, writ, some by men of the black, 
one of the green cloth, wherein the absoluteness of the Eng- 
lish monarchy is against all law asserted. 

" All these considerations put together were sufficient to 
make any honest and well advised man to conceive indeed, 
that upon the passing of this oath and declaration, the whole 
sum of affairs depended. 

" It grew therefore to the greatest contest, that has perhaps 
ever been in Parliament, wherein those Lords, that were 
against this oath, being assured of their own loyalty and merit, 
stood up now for the English liberties with the same genius, 
virtue, and courage, that their noble ancestors had formerly 
defended the great Charter of England, but with so much 
greater commendation, in that they had here a fairer field and 
a more civil way of decision ; they fought it out under all the 
disadvantages imaginable ; they were overlaid by numbers ; 
the noise of the House, like the wind, was against them, and 
if not the sun, the fireside was always in their faces; nor 
being so few, could they, as their adversaries, withdraw to 
refresh themselves in a whole day's ingagement: yet never 
was there a cleai'er demonstration how dull a thing is humane 

1 Grosart, vol. iv. p. 304. 



VI.] LAST YEARS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 205 

eloquence, and greatness how little, when the bright truth 
discovers all things in their proper colours and dimensions, 
and shining, shoots its beams thorow all their fallacies. It 
might be injurious, where all of them did so excellently well, 
to attribute more to any one of those Lords than another, 
unless because the Duke of Buckingham and the Earl of 
Shaftesbury, have been the more reproached for this brave 
action, it be requisite by a double proportion of praise to set 
them two on equal terms with the rest of their companions in 
honour. The particular relation in this debate, which lasted 
many days, with great eagerness on both sides, and the rea- 
sons but on one, was in the next Session burnt by order of 
the Lords, but the sparks of it will eternally fly in their 
adversaries' faces." ^ 

In a letter to his constituents, dated April 22, 1675, 
Marvell was content to say : " The Lords sate the 
whole day yesterday till ten at night without rising 
(and the King all the while but of our addresses 
present) upon their Bill of Test in both houses and are 
not yet come to the question of committing it." 

After prolonged discussion the Oath Bill was sent 
to the Commons, where doubtless it must have passed, 
had not a furious privilege quarrel over Sir John 
Fagg's case made prorogation in June almost a neces- 
sity. In October Parliament met again, and at once 
resolved itself into a Committee upon Religion to 
prevent the growth of Popery. This time the king 
made almost an end of the Parliament by a prorogation 
which lasted from November 1675 until February 1677 
— a period of fifteen months. 

On the re-assembling of Parliament the Duke of 
Buckingham fathered the argument much used during 
the long recess, that a prorogation extending beyond 
twelve months was in construction of law a dissolution. 
For the expression of this opinion and the refusal to 

1 Grosart, vol. iv. p. 308. 



206 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

recant it the Duke of Buckingham and three other 
lords were ordered to the Tower, the king being 
greatly angered by the duke's request that his cook 
might be allowed to wait on him. On this incident 
Marvell remarks : " Thus a prorogation without pre- 
cedent was to be warranted by an imprisonment with- 
out example. A sad instance ! Whereby the dignity 
of Parliament and especially of the House of Peers did 
at present much suffer and may probably more for the 
future, for nothing hut Parliament can destroy Parlia- 
ment. If a House shall once be felon of itself and stop 
its own breath, taking away that liberty of speech 
which the King verbally, and of course, allows them 
(as now they had done in both houses) to what pur- 
pose is it coming thither ? " ^ 

The character of this House of Commons did not 
improve with age. 

Marvell writes in the Growth of Popery : — 

" In matters of money they seem at first difficult, but having 
been discoursed with in private, they are set right, and begin 
to understand it better themselves, and to convert their 
brethren : for they are all of them to be bought and sold, only 
their number makes them cheaper, and each of them doth so 
overvalue himself, that sometimes they outstand or let slip 
their own market. 

" It is not to be imagined, how small things, in this case, 
even members of great estates will stoop at, and most of them 
will do as much for hopes as others for fruition, but if their 
patience be tired out, they grow at last mutinous, and revolt 
to the country, till some better occasion offer. 

" Among these are some men of the best understanding 
were they of equal integrity, who affect to ingress all business, 
to be able to quash any good motion by parliamentary skill, 
unless themselves be the authors, and to be the leading men 
of the House, and for their natural lives to continue so. But 

1 Grosart, vol. iv. p. 322. 



VI.] LAST YEARS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 207 

these are men that have been once fooled, most of them, and 
discovered, and slighted at Court, so that till some turn of 
State shall let them in their adversaries' place, in the mean 
time they look sullen, make big motions, and contrive specious 
bills for the subject, yet only v^^ait the opportunity to be the 
instruments of the same counsels which they oppose in others. 
" There is a third part still remaining, but as contrary in 
themselves as light and darkness ; those are either the worst, 
or the best of men ; the first are most profligate persons, they 
have neither estates, consciences, nor good manners, yet are 
therefore picked out as the necessary men, and whose votes 
will go furthest ; the charges of their elections are defrayed, 
whatever they amount to, tables are kept for them at White- 
hall, and through Westminster, that they may be ready at 
hand, within call of a question : all of them are received into 
pension, and know their pay-day, which they never fail of: 
insomuch that a great officer was pleased to say, ' That they 
came about him like so many jack-daws for cheese at the end 
of every Session.' If they be not in Parliament, they must 
be in prison, and as they are protected themselves, by privi- 
lege, so they sell their protections to others, to the obstruction 
so many years together of the law of the land, and the publick 
justice ; for these it is, that the long and frequent adjourn- 
ments are calculated, but all whether the court, or the 
monopolizers of the country party, or those that profane the 
title of old cavaliers, do equally, though upon differing reasons, 
like death apprehend a dissolution. But notwithstanding 
these, there is an handful of salt, a sparkle of soul, that hath 
hitherto preserved this gross body from putrefaction, some 
gentlemen that are constant, invariable, indeed Englishmen; 
such as are above hopes, or fears, or dissimulation, that can 
neither flatter, nor betray their king or country : but being 
conscious of their own loyalty and integrity, proceed throw 
good and bad report, to acquit themselves in their duty to 
God, their prince, and their nation ; although so small a scant- 
ling in number, that men can scarce reckon of them more than 
a quorum ; insomuch that it is less difficult to conceive how 
fire was first brought to light in the world than how any 
good thing could ever be produced out of an House of Com- 



208 ANDREW MAllVELL [chap. 

mons so constituted, unless as that is imagined to have come 
from the rushing of trees, or battering of rocks together, by 
accident, so these, by their clashing with one another, have 
struck out ah useful effect from so unlikely causes. But 
whatsoever casual good hath been wrought at any time by 
the assimilation of ambitious, factious and disappointed 
members, to the little, but solid, and unbiassed party, the 
more frequent ill effects, and consequences of so unequal a 
mixture, so long continued, are demonstrable and apparent. 
For while scarce any man comes thither with respect to the 
publick service, but in design to make and raise his fortune, 
it is not to be expressed, the debauchery, and lewdness, 
which, upon occasion of election to Parliaments, are now 
grown habitual t iiorow the nation. So that the vice, and the 
expence, are risen to such a prodigious height, that few sober 
men can indure to stand to be chosen on such conditions. 
From whence also arise feuds, and perpetual animosities, over 
most of the counties and corporations, while gentlemen 
of worth, spirit, and ancient estates and dependances, see 
themselves overpowered in tlieir own neighbourhood by the 
drunkness and bribery, of their competitors. But if never- 
theless any worthy person chance to carry the election, some 
mercenary or corrupt sheriff makes a double return, and so 
the cause is handed to the Committee of elections, who ask 
no better, but are ready to adopt his adversary into the House 
if he be not legitimate. And if the gentleman agrieved seek 
his remedy against the sheriff in Westminster-Hall, and the 
proofs be so palpable, that the King's Bench cannot invent 
how to do him injustice, yet the major part of the twelve 
judges shall upon better consideration vacate the sheriff's fine 
and reverse the judgement; but those of them that dare 
dissent from their brethren are in danger to be turned off the 
bench without any cause assigned. AVhile men therefore 
care not thus how they get into the House of Commons, 
neither can it be expected that they should make any con- 
science of what they do there, but tliey are only intent how 
to reimburse themselves (if their elections were at their own 
charge) or how to bargain their votes for a place or a pension. 
They list themselves straightways into some Court faction, 



VI.] LAST YEARS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 209 

and it is as well-known among them, to what Lord each of 
them retain, as when formerly they wore coats and badges. 
By this long haunting so together, they are grown too so 
familiar among themselves, that all reverence of their own 
Assembly is lost, that they live together not like Parliament 
men, but like so many good fellows met together in a publick 
house to make merry. And which is yet worse, by being so 
thoroughly acquainted, they iinderstand their number and 
party, so that the use of so publick a counsel is frustrated, 
there is no place for deliberation, no perswading by reason, 
but they can see one another's votes through both thi-oats and 
cravats before they hear them. 

" Where the cards are so well known, they are only fit for 
a cheat, and no fair gamester but would throw them under 
the table." 1 

It is a melancholy picture. 

Here, perhaps, may be best inserted the story about 
the proffered bribe. The story is entitled to small 
credit, but as helping to swell and maintain a tradition 
concerning an historical character aboiit whom little is 
positively known, it can hardly escape mention in any 
biography of Marvell. A pamphlet printed in Ireland 
(1754) supplies an easy-flowing version of the tale. 

" The borough of Hull, in the reign of Charles ii., chose 
Andrew Marvell, a young gentleman of little or no fortune, 
and maintained him in London for the service of the public. 
His understanding, integrity, and spirit, were dreadful to the 
then infamous administration. Persuaded that he would be 
theirs for properly asking, they sent his old school-fellow, the 
Lord Treasurer Danby, to renew acquaintance with him in 
his garret. At parting, the Lord Treasurer, out of pure 
affection, slipped into his hand an oi'der upon the treasury for 
£1000, and then went to his chariot. Marvell, looking at 
the paper, calls after the Treasurer, 'My Lord, I request 
another moment.' They went up again to the garret, and 
Jack, the servant boy, was called. ' Jack, child, what had I 

I Grosart, vol. iv. p. 327. 



210 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. vi. 

for dinner yesterday ? ' ' Don't you remember, sir ? you had 
the little shoulder of mutton that you ordered me to bring 
from a woman in the market.' ' Very right, child.' 'What 
have I for dinner to-day?' ' Don't you know, sir, that you 
bid me lay by the blade-hone to broil.' ' 'T is so, very right, 
child, go away.' ' My Lord, do you hear that ? Andrew 
Marvell's dinner is provided ; there 's your piece of paper. 
I want it not. I knew the sort of kindness you intended. 
I live here to serve my constituents : the ministry may seek 
men for their purpose ; / am not one.' " ^ 

One more letter remains to be quoted : — 

To William Ramsden, Esq. 

''June 10, 1678. 

"Dear Will, — I have time to tell you thus much of 
publick matters. The patience of the Scots, under their 
oi^pressions, is not to be paralleled in any history. They still 
continue their extraordinary and numerous, but peaceable, 
field conventicles. One Mr. Welch is their arch-minister, and 
the last letter I saw tells, people were going forty miles to 
hear him. There came out, about Christmas last, here, a 
large book concerning the growth of popery and arbitrary 
government. There have been great rewards offered in 
private, and considerable in the Gazette, to any one who 
could inform of the author or printer, but not yet discovered. 
Three or four printed books since have described, as near as 
it was proper to go, the man being a Member of Parliament, 
Mr. Marvell, to have been the author ; but if he had, surely 
he should not have escaped being questioned in Parliament 
or some other place. My good wishes attend you." 

The last letter Andrew Marvell wrote to liis con- 
stituents is dated July 6, 1678. The member for Hull 
died in August 1678. The Parliament in which he had 
sat continuously for eighteen years was at last dissolved 
on the 30tli of December in the year of his death. 

1 This story is first told in a balder form by Cooke iu his 
edition of 1726. It may be read as Cooke tells it in the Dic- 
tionary of National Bior/raphy, xxxvi., p. 329. There was 
probably some foundation for It. 



CHAPTER VII 

FINAL SATIRES AND DEATH 

Marvell was no orator or debater, and though a 
member of Parliament for nearly eighteen years, but 
rarely opened his mouth in the House of Commons. 
His old enemy, Samuel Parker, whilst venting his 
posthumous spite upon the author of the Rehearsal 
Transprosed, would have us believe " that our Poet could 
not speak without a sound basting : whereupon having 
frequently undergone this discipline, he learnt at 
length to hold his tongue." There is no good reason 
for believing the Bishop of Oxford, but it is the fact 
that, however taught, Marvell had learnt to hold his 
tongue. His longest reported speech will be found in 
the Parliamentary History, vol. iv. p. 855.^ When we 
remember how frequently in those days Marvell's pet 
subjects were under fierce discussion, we must recog- 
nise how fixed was his habit of self-repression. 

On one occasion only are we enabled to catch a 
glimpse of Marvell " before the Speaker." It was in 
March 1677, and is thus reported in the Parliamentary 
History, though no mention of the incident is made in 
the Journals of the House : — 

1 In reading the early volumes of the Parliamentary History 
the question has to be asked, What authority is there for the 
reports of speeches ? In Charles the Second's time some of the 
speakers, both in the Lords and Commons, evidently communicated 
their orations to the press. 

211 



212 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

^^ Delate on Mr. Andrew MarvelVs striking Sir Philip 
Harcourt, March 29. — Mr. Marvell, coming up the house to 
his place, stumbling at Sir Philip Harcourt's foot, in recover- 
ing himself, seemed to give Sir Philip a box on the ear. The 
Speaker acquainting the house ' That he saw a box on the 
ear given, and it was his duty to inform the house of it,' 
this debate ensued. 

" Mr. Marvell. What passed was through great acquaint- 
ance and familiarity betwixt us. He neither gave him an 
affront, nor intended him any. But the Speaker cast a severe 
reflection upon him yesterday, when he was out of the house, 
and he hopes that, as the Speaker keeps us in order, he will 
keep himself in order for the future. 

" Sir John Ernly. What the Speaker said yesterday was 
in Marvell's vindication. If these two gentlemen are friends 
already, he would not make them friends, and would let the 
matter go no further. 

" Sir Job. Charlton is sorry a tlnng of this nature has 
happened, and no more sense of it. You in the Chair, and 
a stroke struck ! Marvell deserves for his reflection on you, 
Mr. Speaker, to be called in question. You cannot do right 
to the house unless you question it ; and moves to have Mar- 
vell sent to the Tower. 

" The Speaker. I saw a blow on one side, and a stroke on 
the other. 

" Sir Philip Harcourt. Marvell had some kind of a stumble, 
and mine was only a thrust ; and the thing was accidental. 

" Sir H. Goodrick. The persons have declared the thing to 
be accidental, but if done in jest, not fit to be done here. 
He believes it an accident, and hopes the house thinks so 
too. 

" Mr. Sec. Williamson. This does api^ear, that the action 
for that time was in some heat. He cannot excuse Marvell 
who made a very severe reflection on the Speaker, and since 
it is so enquired, whether you have done your duty, he would 
have Marvell withdraw, that you may consider of it. 

" Col. Sandys. Marvell has given you trouble, and instead 
of excusing himself, reflects upon the Speaker : a strange 
confidence, if not an impudence I 



VII.] FINAL SATIRES AND DEATH 213 

" Mr. MarveU. Has so great a respect to the privilege, order, 
and decency, of the house, that he is content to be a sacrifice 
for it. As to the casualty that happened, he saw a seat empty, 
and going to sit in it, his friend put him by, in a jocular 
manner, and what he did was of the same nature. So much 
familiarity has ever been between them, that there was no 
heat in the thing. He is sorry he gave an offence to the house. 
He seldom speaks to the house, and if he commit an error, in 
the manner of his speech, being not so well tuned, he hopes 
it is not an offence. Whether out or in the house, he has a 
respect to the Speaker. But he has been informed that the 
Speaker resumed something he had said, with reflection. He 
did not think fit to complain of Mr. Seymour to ]\Ir. Speaker. 
He believes that is not reflective. He desires to comport 
himself with all respect to the house. This passage with 
Harcourt was a perfect casualty, and if you think fit, he will 
withdraw, and sacrifice himself to the censure of the house. 

" Sir Henry Capel. The blow given Harcourt was with his 
hat ; the Speaker cast his eye upon both of them, and both 
respected him. He would not aggravate the thing. MarveU 
submits, and he would have you leave the thing as it is. 

"Sir Robert Holmes savf the whole action. MarveU flung 
about three or four times with his hat, and then gave Har- 
court a box on the ear. 

" Sir Henry Capel desires, now that his honour is concerned, 
that Holmes may explain, whether he saw not Marvel! with 
his hat only give Harcourt the stroke ' at that time.' Possibly 
'at another time ' it might be. 

" The Speaker. Both Holmes and Capel are in the right. 
But MarveU struck Harcourt so home, that his fist, as well 
as his hat, hit him. 

" Sir R. Howard hopes the house will not have Harcourt 
say he received a blow, when he has not. He thinks what 
has been said by them both sufficient. 

" Mr. Garraway hopes, that by the debate we shall not 
make the thing greater than it is. Would have them both 
reprimanded for it. 

"Mr. Sec. Williamson submits the honour of the house to 
the house. Would have them made friends, and give that 



214 ANDREW MARVELL [ciiAr. 

necessary assurance to the house, and he, for his part, re- 
mains satisfied. 

" Sir Tho. Meres. By our long sitting together, we lose, by 
our familiarity and acquaintance, the decencies of the house. 
He has seen 500 in the house, and people very orderly; not 
so much as to read a letter, or set up a foot. One could 
scarce know anybody in the house, but him that spoke. He 
would have the Speaker declare that order ought to be kept; 
but as to that gentleman (IMarvell) to rest satisfied." 

The general impression left upon the mind is that 
of a friendly-familiar but choleric gentleman, full of 
likes and dislikes, readier with his tongue in the lobby 
than with " set " speeches in the Chamber. A solitary 
politician with a biting pen. Satirists must not com- 
plain if they have enemies. 

Marvell's vein of satire was never worked out, and 
the political poems of his last decade are fuller than 
ever of a savage humour. How he kept his ears is a 
repeated wonder. He is said to have been on terms 
of intimate friendship with Prince Rupert, and it is a 
steady tradition that the king was one of his amused 
readers. It is hard to believe that even Charles the 
Second could have seen any humour, good or bad, in 
such a couplet : — 

" The poor Priapus King, led by the nose. 
Looks as a thing set up to scare the crows." 

Nor can the following verses have been read with much 
pleasure, either at Whitehall or in a punt whilst fishing 
at Windsor. Their occasion was the setting up in the 
stocks-market in the City of London of a statue of the 
king by Sir Robert Viner, a city knight, to whom 
Charles was very heavily in debt. Sir Robert, having 
a frugal mind, had acquired a statue of John Sobieski 
trampling on the Turk, which, judiciously altered, was 
made to pass muster so as to represent the Pensioner 



VII.] FINAL SATIRES AND DEATH 215 

of Louis the Foiirteeutli and the Vendor of Dunkirk 
trampling on Oliver Cromwell. 

" As cities that to the fierce conqueror yield 
Do at their own cliarges their citadels build ; 
So Sir Robert advanced the King's statue in token 
Of bankers defeated, and Lombard Street broken. 

Some thought it a knightly and generous deed, 

Obliging the city with a King and a steed ; 

When with honour he might from his word have gone 

back ; 
He that vows in a calm is absolved by a wrack. 

But now it appears, from the first to the last, 

To be a revenge and a malice forecast ; 

Upon the King's birthday to set up a thing 

That shows him a monkey much more than a King. 

When each one that passes finds fault with the horse, 
Yet all do affirm that the King is much worse ; 
And some by the likeness Sir Robert suspect 
That he did for the King his own statue erect. 

Thus to see him disfigured — the herb-women chid, 
Who up on their panniers more gracefully rid ; 
And so loose in his seat — that all persons agree. 
E'en Sir William Peak ^ sits much firmer than he. 

But Sir Robert affirms that we do him much wrong ; 
'T is the 'graver at work, to reform him, so long ; 
But, alas ! he will never arrive at his end. 
For it is such a King as no chisel can mend. 

But with all his errors restore us our King, 

If ever you hope in December for spring; 

For though all the world cannot show such another, 

Yet we 'd rather have him than his bigoted brother-" 

Of a more exalted vein of satire the following ex- 
tract may serve as an example : — 

1 Lord Mayor, 1667. 



216 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

BRITANNIA AND RALEIGH 

" Bi'it. Ah ! Raleigh, when thou didst thy breath resign 
To trembling James, would I had quitted mine. 
Cubs didst thou call them ? Hadst thou seen this brood 
Of earls, and dukes, and princes of the blood, 
No more of Scottish race thou would'st complain, 
Those would be blessings in this spurious reign. 
Awake, arise from thy long blessed repose, 
Once more with me partake of mortal woes ! 

Ral. What mighty power has forced me from my rest ? 
Oh! mighty queen, why so untimely dressed? 

Brit. Favoured by night, concealed in this disguise, 
Wliilst the lewd court in drunken slumber lies, 
I stole away, and never will return. 
Till England knows who did her city burn; 
Till cavaliers shall favourites be deemed. 
And loyal sufferers by the court esteemed ; 
Till Leigh and Galloway shall bribes reject ; 
Thus Osborne's golden cheat I shall detect : 
Till atheist Lauderdale shall leave this land. 
And Commons' votes shall cut-nose guards disband : 
Till Kate a happy mother shall become. 
Till Charles loves parliaments, and James hates Rome. 

Ral. What fatal crimes make you for ever fly 

Your once loved court, and martyr's progeny? 

Brit. A colony of French possess the Court, 

Pimps, priests, buffoons, i' the privy-chamber sport. 

Such slimy monsters ne'er approached the throne 

Since Pharaoh's reign, nor so defiled a crown. 

I' the sacred ear tyrannic arts they croak. 

Pervert his mind, his good intentions choke ; 

Tell him of golden Indies, fairy lands, 

Leviathan, and absolute commands. 

Thus, fairy-like, the King they steal away, 

And in his room a Lewis changeling lay. 

How oft have I him to himself restored. 

In 's left the scale, in 's right hand placed the sword ? 



VII.] FINAL SATIRES AND DEATH 217 

Taught him their use, what dangers would ensue 

To those that tried to separate these two? 

The bloody Scottish chronicle turned o'er, 

Showed him how many kings, in pm-ple gore, 

Were hurled to hell, by learning tyrant lore ? 

The other day famed Spenser I did bring, 

In lofty notes Tudor's blest reign to sing ; 

How Spain's proud powers her virgin arms controlled, 

And golden days in peaceful order rolled ; 

How like ripe fruit she dropped from off her throne, 

Full of grey hairs, good deeds, and great renown. 

Ral. Once more, great queen, thy darling strive to save. 
Snatch him again from scandal and the grave; 
Present to 's thoughts his long-scorned parliament, 
The basis of his throne and government. 
In his deaf ears sound his dead father's name:. 
Perhaps that spell may 's erring soul reclaim : 
Whoknows what good effects from thence may spring? 
'T is godlike good to save a falling king. 

Brit. Raleigh, no more, for long in vain I 've tried 
The Stuart from the tyrant to divide ; 
As easily learned virtuosos may 
With the dog's blood his gentle kind convey 
Into the wolf, and make his guardian turn 
To the bleating flock, by him so lately torn : 
If this imperial juice once taint his blood, 
'T is by no potent antidote withstood. 
Tyrants, like lep'rous kings, for public weal 
Should be immured, lest the contagion steal 
Over the whole. The elect of the Jessean line 
To this firm law their sceptre did resign ; 
And shall this base tyrannic brood invade 
Eternal laws, by God for mankind made ? 

To the serene Venetian state I '11 go. 
From her sage mouth famed principles to know ; 
With her the prudence of the ancients read, 
To teach my people in their steps to tread ; 



218 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

By their great pattern such a state I '11 frame, 

Shall eternize a glorious lasting name. 

Till then, my Raleigh, teach our noble youth 

To love sobriety, and holy truth ; 

Watch and preside over their tender age, 

Lest court corruption should their souls engage ; 

Teach them how arts, and arms, in thy young days, 

Employed our youth — not taverns, stews, and plays ; 

Tell them the generous scorn their race does owe 

To flattery, pimping, and a gaudy show ; 

Teach them to scorn the Carwells, Portsmouths, Nells, 

The Clevelands, Osbornes, Berties, Lauderdales : 

Poppaea, Tigelline, and Arteria's name, 

All yield to these in lewdness, lust, and fame. 

Make them admire the Talbots, Sydneys, Veres, 

Drake, Cavendish, Blake, men void of slavish fears. 

True sons of glory, pillars of the state, 

On whose famed deeds all tongues and writers wait. 

When with fierce ardour their bright souls do burn. 

Back to my dearest country I'll return." 

The dialogue between the two horses, which bore 
upon their respective backs the stone effigies of 
Charles the First at Charing Cross and Charles the 
Second at Wool-Church, is, in its own rough way, 
masterly satire for the popular ear. 

" If the Roman Church, good Christians, oblige ye 
To believe man and beast have spoken in efBgy, 
Why should we not credit the public discourses. 
In a dialogue between two inanimate horses ? 
The horses I mean of Wool-Church and Charing, 
Who told many truths worth any man's hearing, 
Since Viner and Osborn did buy and provide 'em 
For the two mighty monarchs who now do bestride 'em. 
The stately brass stallion, and the white marble steed. 
The night came together, by all 'tis agreed ; 
When both kings were weary of sitting all day, 
They stole off, incognito, each his own way ; 
And then the two jades, after mutual salutes, 
Not only discoursed, but fell to disputes." 



VII.] FINAL SATIRES AND DEATH 219 

The dialogue is too long to be quoted. Charles the 
Second's steed boldly declares : — 

"De Witt and Cromwell had each a brave soul, 
I freely declare it, I am for old Noll ; 
Though his government did a tyrant resemble, 
He made England great, and his enemies tremble." 

Mr. Hollis, when he sent the picture of Cromwell by- 
Cooper to Sidney Sussex College, is said to have 
written beneath it the lines just quoted. 
The satire ends thus : — 

" Charinc] Cross. But canst thou devise when things will be 
mended ? 
Wool-Church. When the reign of the line of the Stuarts is 
ended. 
Charing Cross. Then England, rejoice, thy redemption 
draws nigh ; 
Thy oppression together with kingship 
shall die. 
Chorus. A Commonwealth, a Commonwealth we 
proclaim to the nation, 
For the gods have repented the King's 
restoration." 

These probably are the lines which spread the popular, 
but mistaken, belief that Marvell was a Republican. 

Andrew Marvell died in his lodgings in London 
on the 16th of August 1678. Colonel Grosvenor, 
writing to George Treby, M.P. (afterwards Chief of 
the Common Pleas), on the ITtli of August, reports 
"Andrew Marvell died yesterday of apoplexy." 
Parliament was not sitting at the time. What was 
said of the elder Andrew may also be said of the 
younger : he was happy in the moment of his death. 
The one just escaped the Civil War, the other the 
Popish Plot. 

Marvell was thought to have been poisoned. Such 
a suspicion in those bad times was not far-fetched. 



220 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

His satires, rough but moving, had been widely read, 
and his fears for the Constitution, his dread of 

" The grim Monster, Arbitrary Power, 
The ugliest Giant ever trod the earth," 

infested many breasts, and bred terror. 

"Marvel], the Island's watchful sentinel, 
Stood in the gap and bravely kept his post." 

The post was one of obvious danger, and 

" Whether Fate or Art untwin'd his thread 
Remains in doubt." ^ 

The doubt lias now been dissipated by the research 
of an accomplislied pliysician, Dr. Gee, who in 1874 
communicated to the Athenoe^im (March 7, 1874) an 
extract from Eichard Morton's HvpeToXoyCa (1692), 
containing a full account of Marvell's sickness and 
death Art " untwin'd his thread," but it was the doc- 
tor's art. Dr. Gee's translation of Morton's medical 
Latin is as follows : — 

" In this manner was that most famous man Andrew 
Marvell carried off from amongst the living before his time, 
to the great loss of the republic, and especially the republic 
of letters ; through the ignorance of an old conceited doctor, 
who was in the habit on all occasions of raving excessively 
against Peruvian bark, as if it were a common plague. How- 
beit, without any clear indication, in the interval after a third 
fit of regular tertian ague, and by way of i^reparatiou (so that 
all things might seem to be done most methodically), blood 
was copiously drawn from the patient, who was advanced in 
years." [Here follow more details of treatment, which I pass 
over.] " The way having been made ready after this fashion, 
at the beginning of the next fit, a great febrifuge was given, 
a draught, that is to say, of Venice treacle, etc. By the 
doctor's orders, the patient was covered up close with blankets, 

1 See Marvell's Ghost, hi Poems on Affairs of State. 



vii.] FINAL SATIRES AND DEATH 221 

say rather, was buried under them ; and composed himself 
to sleep and sweat, so that he might escape the cold shivers 
which are wont to accompany tlie onset of the ague-fit. He 
was seized with tlie deepest sleep and colliquative sweats, and 
in the short space of twenty-four hours from the time of the 
ague-fit, he died comatose. He died, who, had a single ounce 
of Peruvian bark been properly given, might easily have 
escai^ed, in twenty-four hours, from the jaws of the grave 
and the disease : and so burning with anger, I informed the 
doctor, when he told me this story without any sense of 
shame." 

Marvell was buried on the 18th of August, " under 
the pews in the south side of St. Giles's Church in the 
Fields, under the window wherein is painted on glass 
a red lion." So writes the invaluable Aubrey, who 
tells us he had the account from the sexton who made 
the grave. 

In 1678 St. Giles's Church was a brick structure 
built by Laud. The present imposing church was 
built on the site of the old one in 1730-34. 

In 1774 Captain Thompson, so he tells us, " visited 
the grand mausoleum under the church of St. Giles, 
to search for the coffin in Avhich Mr. Marvell was 
placed : in this vault were deposited upwards of a 
thousand bodies, but I could find no plate of an earlier 
date than 1722 ; I do therefore suppose the new church 
is built upon the former burial place." 

The poet's grand-nephew, Mr. Eobert Nettleton, in 
1764 placed on the north side of the present church, 
upon a black marble slab, a long epitaph, still to be 
seen, recording the fact that " near to this place lyeth 
the body of Andrew Marvell, Esquire." At no great 
distance from this slab is the tombstone, recently 
brought in from the graveyard outside, of Georgius 
Chapman, Poeta, a fine Roman monument, prepared by 
the care and at the cost of the poet's friend, Inigo 



222 ANDEEW MAEVELL [chap. 

Jones. Still left exposed, in what is now a doleful 
garden (not at all Marvellian), is the tombstone of 
Richard Penderel of Boscobel, one of the five yeomen 
brothers who helped Charles to escape after Worcester. 
Lord Herbert of Cherbury, in 1648, and Shirley the 
dramatist, in 1666, had been carried to the same place 
of sepulture. 

Aubrey describes Marvell " as of middling stature, 
pretty strong-set, roundish faced, cherry-cheeked, hazell 
eye, brown hair. He was, in his conversation, very 
modest, and of very few words. Though he loved 
wine, he would never drink hard in company, and 
was wont to say that he would not play the good 
fellow in any man's company in whose hands he would 
not trust his life. He kept bottles of Avine at his 
lodgings, and many times he would drink liberally 
by himself and to refresh his spirit and exalt his 
muse. James Harrington (author of Oceana) was his 
intimate friend ; J. Pell, D.D., was one of his acquaint- 
ances. He had not a general acquaintance." 

Dr. Pell, one may remark, was a great friend of 
Hobbes. 

In March 1679 joint administration was granted by 
the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, Marice Marvell 
relictoe et Jolini Greni Creditori. This is the first time 
we hear of there being any wife in the case. A 
creditor of a deceased person could not obtain admini- 
stration without citing the next of kin, but a widow 
was entitled, under a statute of Henry viii., as of 
right, to administration, and it may be that Mr. Green 
thought the quickest way of being paid his debt was 
to invent a widow. The practice of the court required 
an affidavit from the widow deposing that she was 
the lawful relict of the deceased, but this assertion on 
oath seems in ordinary cases to have been sufficient, 



VII.] FINAL SATIRES AND DEATH 223 

if the customary fees were fortlicoming. Captain 
Thompson roundly asserts that the alleged Mary 
Marvell was a cheat, and no more than the lodging- 
house keeper where he had last lived — and Marvell 
was a migratory man.^ Mary Marvell's name appears 
once again, in the forefront of the first edition of 
Marvell's Poems (1681), where she certifies all the 
contents to be her husband's works. This may have 
been a publisher's, as the affidavit may have been a 
creditor's, artifice. As against this, Mr. Grosart, who 
believed in Mary Marvell, reminds i;s that Mr. Robert 
Boulter, the publisher of the poems, was a most respect- 
able man, and a friend both of Milton's and Marvell's, 
and not at all likely either to cheat the public with 
a falsely signed certificate, or to be cheated by a 
London lodging-house keeper. Whatever " Mary 
Marvell " may have been, " widow, wife, or maid," 
she is heard of no more. 

Hull was not wholly unmindful of her late and 
(William Wilberforce notwithstanding) her most 
famous member. " On Thursday the 26th of Sep- 
tember 1678, in consideration of the kindness the 
Town and Borough had for Andrew Marvell, Esq., 
one of the Burgesses of Parliament for the same 
Borough (lately deceased), and for his great merits 
from the Corporation. It is this day ordered by the 
Court that Fifty pounds be paid out of the Town's 
Chest towards the discharge of his funerals {sic), and 
to perpetuate his memory by a gravestone" {Bench 
Books of Hull). 

The incumbent of Trinity Church is said to have 
objected to the erection of any monument. At all 

1 The cottage at Highgate, long called ' Marvell's Cottage,' has 
now disappeared. Several of Marvell's letters were written from 
Highgate. 



224 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. vii. 

events there is none. Marvell had many enemies in 
the Chnrch. Sharp, afterwards Archbishop of York, 
was a Yorkshire man, and had been domestic chaplain 
to Sir Heneage Finch, a laAvyer-member, much lashed 
by Marvell's bitter pen. Sharp had also taken part 
in the quarrel with the Dissenters, and is reported to 
liave been very much opposed to any Hull monument 
to Marvell. Captain Thompson says '' the Epitaph 
which the Town of Hull caused to be erected to 
Marvell's memory was torn down by the Zealots 
of the King's party." There is no record of this 
occurrence. 

There are several portraits of Marvell in existence 
— one now being in the National Portrait Gallery. 
A modern statue in marble adorns the Town Hall of 
Hull. 



CHAPTER VIII 

WORK AS A MAN OF LETTERS 

Marvell's work as a man of letters easily divides 
itself into the inevitable three parts. First, as a poet 
properly so called ; Second, as a political satirist using 
rhyme ; and TJdrd, as a writer of prose. 

Upon Marvell's work as a poet properly so called 
that curious, floating, ever-changing population to 
whom it is convenient to refer as " the reading public," 
had no opportunity of forming any real opinion until 
after the poet's death, namely, when the small folio of 
1681 made its appearance. This volume, although not 
containing the Horatian Ode upon CromwelVs Return 
from Ireland or the lines upon Cromwell's death, did 
contain, saving these exceptioos, all the best of 
Marvell's verse. 

How this poetry was received, to whom and to 
how many it gave pleasure, we have not the means 
of knowing. The book, like all other good books, 
had to take its chance. Good poetry is never 
exactly unpopular — its difficulty is to get a hearing, 
to secure a vogue. I feel certain that from 1681 on- 
wards many ingenuous souls read Eyes and Tears, The 
Bermudas, TJie Nymph complaining for the Death of her 
Faivn, To his Coy Mistress, Young Love, and Tlie Gar- 
den with pure delight. In 1699 the poet Pomfret, of 
whose CJioice Dr. Johnson said in 1780, "perhaps 
no composition in our language has been oftener 
Q 225 



226 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

perused," and who Southey in 1807 declared to be 
" the most popular of English poets " ; in 1699, I say, 
this poet Pomfret says in a preface, sensibly enough, 
''' to please everyone would be a New Thing, and to 
write so as to please no Body would be as New, for even 
Quarles and Wythers (sic) have their Admirers." So 
liable is the public taste to fluctuations and reversals, 
that to-day, though Quarles and Wither are not 
popular authors, they certainly number many more 
readers than Pomfret, Southey's " most popular of 
English poets," who has now, it is to be feared, 
finally disappeared even from the Anthologies. But 
if Quarles and Wither had their admirers even in 
1699, the poet Marvell, we may be sure, had his 
also. 

Marvell had many poetical contemporaries — five- 
and-twenty at least — poets of mark and interest, to 
most of whom, as well as to some of his immediate 
predecessors, he stood, as I must suppose, in some 
degree of poetical relationship. With Milton and 
Dryden no comparison will suggest itself, but with 
Donne and Cowley, with Waller and Denham, with 
Butler and the now wellnigh forgotten Cleveland, 
with Walker and Charles Cotton, with Eochester and 
Dorset, some resemblances, certain influences, may be 
found and traced. From the order of his mind and 
his prose style, I should judge Marvell to have been 
both a reader and a critic of his contemporaries 
in verse and prose — though of his criticisms little 
remains. Of Butler he twice speaks with great 
respect, and his sole reference to the dead Cleveland 
is kindly. Of Milton we know what he thought, 
whilst Aubrey tells us that he once heard Marvell 
say that the Earl of Rochester was the only man in 
England that had the true vein of satire. 



viii.] WORK AS A MAN OF LETTERS 227 

Be tliese influences what they may or must have 
been, to us Marvell occupies, as a poet, a niche by 
himself. A finished master of his art he never was. 
He could not write verses like his friend Lovelace, or 
like Cowley's Chronicle or Waller's lines " On a Girdle." 
He had not the inexhaustible, astonishing (though 
tiresome) wit of Butler. He is often clumsy and 
sometimes almost babyish. One has frequently occa- 
sion to wonder how a man of business could allow 
himself to be tickled by such obvious straws as are 
too many of the conceits which give him pleasure. To 
attribute all the conceits of this period to the influence 
of Dr. Donne is but a poor excuse after all. The 
worst thing that can be said against poetry is that 
there is so much tedium in it. The glorious moments 
are all too few. It is his honest recognition of this 
woeful fact that makes Dr. Johnson, with all his 
faults lying thick about him, the most consolatory of 
our critics to the ordinary reading man. "Tedious- 
ness is the most fatal of all faults. . . . Unhappily 
this pernicious failure is that which an author is least 
able to discover. We are seldom tiresome to ourselves. 
. . . Perhaps no man ever thought a line superfluous 
when he wrote it " (Lives of the Poets. Under Prior — 
see also under Butler). 

That Marvell is never tiresome I will not assert. 
But he too has his glorious moments, and they are all 
his own. In the whole compass of our poetry there 
is nothing quite like Marvell's love of gardens and 
woods, of meads and rivers and birds. It is a love 
not learnt from books, not borrowed from brother- 
poets. It is not indulged in to prove anything. It is 
all sheer enjoyment. 

" Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines, 
Curb me about, ye gadding vines, 



228 ANDKEW MAKVELL [chap. 

And oh, so close your circles lace, 
That I may never leave this place ! 
Bat, lest your fetters prove too weak, 
Ere I your silken bondage break. 
Do you, O brambles, chain me too. 
And, courteous briars, nail me through. 

Here at the fountain's sliding foot, 
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, 
Casting the body's vest aside, 
My soul into the boughs does glide; 
There, like a bird, it sits and sings." 

No poet is happier than Marvell in creating the 
impression that he made his verses out of doors. 

" He saw the partridge drum in the woods ; 
He heard the woodcock's evening hymn ; 
He found the tawny thrush's broods, 
And the shy hawk did wait for him. 
What others did at distance hear 
And guessed within the thicket's gloom 
Was shown to this philosopher. 
And at his bidding seemed to come." 

(From Emerson's Wood Notes.) 

Marvell's immediate fame as a true poet was, I dare 
say, obscured for a good while both by its original 
note (for originality is always forbidding at first sight) 
and by its author's fame as a satirist, and his reputa- 
tion as a lover of "liberty's glorious feast." It was 
as one of the poets encountered in the Poems on Affairs 
of State (fifth edition, 1703) that Marvell was best 
known during the greater part of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. As Milton's friend Marvell had, as it were, a 
side-chapel in the great Miltonic temple. The patriotic 
member of Parliament, who refused in his poverty 
the Lord-Treasurer Danby's proffered bribe, became 
a character in history before the exquisite quality of 



viii.] WORK AS A MAN OF LETTERS 229 

his garden-poetry was recognised. There was a cult 
for Liberty in the middle of the eighteenth century, 
and Marvell's name was on the list of its professors. 
Wordsworth's sonnet has preserved this tradition for us. 

" Great men have been among us ; hands that penn'd 
And tongues that utter'd wisdom, better none. 
The later Sydney, Marvell, Harrington." 

In 1726 Thomas Cooke printed an edition of Marvell's 
works which contains the poetry that was in the folio 
of 1681, and in 1772 Cooke's edition was reprinted 
by T. Davies. It was probably Davies's edition that 
Charles Lamb, writing to Godwin on Sunday, 14th 1 , 
December 1800, says he " was just going to possess " : 
a notable addition to Lamb's library, and an event 
in the history of the progress of Marvell's poetical 
reputation. Captain Thompson's edition, containing 
the Horatian Ode and other pieces, followed in 1776. 
In the great Poetical Collection of the Booksellers 
(1779-1781) which they improperly^ called "Johnson's 
Poets " (improperly, because the poets were, with four 
exceptions, the choice not of the biographer but of the 
booksellers, anxious to retain their imaginary copy- 
right), Marvell has no place. Mr. George Ellis, in his 
Specimens of the early English poets first published in 
1803, printed from Marvell Daphne and Chloe (in part) 
and Young Love. When Mr. Bowles, that once famous 
sonneteer, edited Pope in 1806, he, by way of be- 
littling Pope, quoted two lines from Marvell, now 
well known, but unfamiliar in 1806 : — 

" And through the hazels thick espy 
The hatching throstle's shining eye." 

He remarked upon them, " the last circumstance is 
new, highly poetical, and could only have been de- 

1 "Indecently " is the doctor's own expression. 



230 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. 

scribed by one who was a real lover of nature and a 
witness of her beauties in her most solitary retirement." 
On this Mark Pattison makes the comment that the 
lines only prove that Marvell when a boy went bird- 
nesting (Essays, vol. ii. p. 374), a pursuit denied to Pope 
by his manifold infirmities. The poet Campbell, in 
his Specimens (1819), gave aa excellent sketch of 
Marvell's life, and selected The Bermudas, TJie Nymph 
and Faivn, and Young Love. Then came, fresh from 
talk with Charles Lamb, Hazlitt, with his Select Poets 
(1825), which contains the Horatian Ode, Bermudas, To 
his Coy Mistress, TJie Nymph and Fawn, A Drop of Deio, 
The Gardeyi, The Gallery, Upon the Hill and Grove at 
Billborow. In this choice we may see the hand of 
Charles Lamb, as Tennyson's may be noticed in the 
selection made in Palgrave's Golden Treasury (1863). 
Dean Trench in his Household Book of English Poetry 
(1869) gives Eyes and Tears, the Horatian Ode, and 
A Drop of Dew. In Mr. Ward's English Poets (1880) 
Marvell is represented by The Garden, A Drop of Dew, 
The Bermudas, Young Love, the Horatian Ode, and the 
Lines on Paradise Lost. Thanks to these later Antho- 
logies and to the quotations from Tlie Garden and Upon 
Appleton House in the Essays of Elia, Marvell's fame as 
a true poet has of recent years become widespread, 
and is now, whatever vicissitudes it may have endured, 
well established. 

As a satirist in rhyme Marvell has shared the usual 
and not undeserved fate of almost all satirists of their 
age and fellow-men. The authors of lines written in 
heat to give expression to the anger of the hour may 
well be content if their effusions give the pain or teach 
the lesson they were intended to give or teach. If 
you lash the age, you do so presumably for the benefit 
of the age. It is very hard to transmit even a fierce 



VIII.] WORK AS A MAN OF LETTERS 231 

and genuine indignation from one age to another. 
Marvell's satires were too hastily composed, too roughly 
constructed, too redolent of the occasion, to enter into 
the kingdom of poetry. To the careful and character- 
loving reader of history, particularly if he chance to 
have a feeling for the House of Commons, not merely 
as an institution, but as a place of resort, Marvell's 
satirical poems must always be intensely interesting. 
They strike me as honest in their main intention, and 
never very wide of the mark. Hallam says, in his 
lofty way, "We read with nothing but disgust the 
satirical poetry of Cleveland, Butler, Oldham, Marvell," 
and he adds, " Marvell's satires are gross and stupid." ^ 
Gross they certainly occasionally are, but stupid they 
never are. Marvell was far too well-informed a poli- 
tician and too shrewd a man ever to be stupid. 

As a satirist Marvell had, if he wanted them, many 
models of style, but he really needed none, for he just 
wrote down in rough-and-ready rhyme whatever his 
head or his spleen suggested to his fancy. Every now 
and again there is a noble outburst of feeling, and a 
couplet of great felicity. I confess to taking great 
pleasure in Marvell's satires. 

As a prose writer Marvell has many merits and one 
great fault. He has fire and fancy and was the owner 
and master of a precise vocabulary well fitted to clothe 
and set forth a well-reasoned and lofty argument. He 
knew how to be both terse and diffuse, and can com- 
press himself into a line or expand over a paragraph. 
He has touches of a grave irony as well as of a 
boisterous humour. He can tell an anecdote and 
elaborate a parable. Swift, we know, had not only 
Butler's Hudihras by heart, but was also (we may 
be sure) a close student of Marvell's prose. His great 
1 See Hallam's History of Literature, vol. iv. pp. 433, 439. 



232 ANDREW MARVELL [chap. viii. 

fault is a very common one. He is too long. He 
forgets how quickly a reader grows tired. He is so 
interested in the evolutions of his own mind that he 
forgets his audience. His interest at times seems as 
if it were going to prove endless. It is the first busi- 
ness of an author to arrest and then to retain the 
attention of the reader. To do this requires great 
artifice. 

Among the masters of English prose it would be 
rash to rank Marvell, who was neither a Hooker nor 
a Taylor. None the less he was the owner of a prose 
style which some people think the best prose style of 
all — that of honest men who have something to say. 



INDEX 



" Account of the Growth of Pop- 
ery and Arbitrary Government 
in Em/land," 180-1, 187; 
quoted, 188. 

Act of Uniformity, 143, 184. 

Addison, 65. 

Aitken, Mr., 47. 

Amersham, 145. 

Amsterdam, 59, 197. 

Angier, Lord, 196. 

Appleton House, 66. 

Arlington, 185, 186. 

Ars Poetica, 47. 

Ashley, Lord, 120, 150, 185. 

Athense Oxonienses, 10. 

Aubrey, 222. 

Austin, John, 159. 

Autobiography (Clarendon), 136. 

Autobiography of Matthew Rob- 
inson, 11 n. 

Axtell, Lieut.-Colonel, 28, 29. 

B 

Baker's Chronicle, 80. 
Baker, Thomas, 24. 
Bampfield, Thomas, 80. 
Banda Islands, 127. 
Barbadoes, 58. 
Barnard, Edward, 95. 
Barron, Richard, 64. 
Baxter, Richard, 52, 93, 179. 
Bedford, 162. 
Bench Books of Hull, 223. 
Bennet, Sir John, 195. 
Berkeley, Charles, 115. 
Berkenhead, Sir John, 191. 
Bermudas, The, 66, 225, 230. 
Besant, Sir Walter, 118 n. 



Bill for "the Rebuilding of 

London," 123, 124, 125, 126 n. ; 

amended, 148. 
Bill of Conventicles, 142, 146, 

147, 148. 
Bill of Subsidy, 193. 
Bill of Test, 205. 
Bill of Uniformity, 101. 
" Bind me, ye woodbines," 227. 
Blackheath, 188. 
Blake, Admiral, 59, 69, 71, 75. 
Blaydes, James, 6. 
— — Joseph, 6. 
Blenheim (Addison), 70. 
Blood, Colonel, 196. 
Bodleian Library, 31, 116. 
Boulter, Robert, 223. 
Bowles, 229. 
Bowyer, 64. 
Boyle, Richard, 115. 
Bradshaw, John, Lord -President 

of the Council, 28, 48, 52, 94, 95. 
Braganza, Catherine of, 33. 
Bramhall Preface, 162. 
Breda, 88; Declaration, 102, 127, 

136. 
"Britannia and Raleigh," 216 

seq. 
Brunswick, Duke of, 196. 
Buckingham, Duke of, 150, 185, 

196, 205, 206. 
Bucknoll, Sir William, 195. 
Bunyan, 162. 
Burnet, Bishop, 3, 163. 
Butler, 62 n., 154, 226. 



"Cabal," 184. 
Cadsaud, 186. 



233 



234 



INDEX 



Calamy, Edmund, 93, 94. 
Cambridge, 48, 175. 
Canary Islands, 70. 
Canterbury, Prerogative Court 

of, 222. 
Capel, 172. 
Carey, Henry, 126 n. 
Carlisle, Lady, 113. 

Lord, 101, 108, 113. 

Carteret, Sir George (Treasurer 

of Navy), 120, 141, 143. 
Castlemaine, Lady, 134. 
Character of Holland, The, 60. 
Charles I., 29, 167. 
Charles ii., 76, 80, 81, 90, 93, 95, 

127, 182, 184, 185, 186, 188, 189, 

195, 196, 203, 205, 206, 214, 

222. 
Chateaubriand, 24. 
Chatham, 128. 
Cherry Burton, 6. 
Choice (Pomfret), 225. 
Chronicle (Cowley), 227. 
Chute, Chalouer, 80. 
Civil War, 23, 219. 
Clare, Lord, 193, 195. 
Clarendon, Earl of, 28, 52, 77, 82; 

History, 88, 114, 120; Life, 129, 

134, 135, 136, 138, 148 n. 
Cleveland, Duke of, 226. 

Duchess of, 196. 

Clifford, 154, 185, 186. 

Clifford's lun, 125. 

Cole, William, 5. 

Collection of Poems on Affairs 

of State, 35. 
Complete Works in Verse and 

Prose of Andrew Marvell, 

M.P., The, 8. 
Conventicle Act, 144. 
Convention Parliament, 87, 91, 95. 
Cooke, Thomas, 229. 
Cooper, 219. 
Copenhagen, 113. 
Cosin, Dr., Bishop of Durham, 

94, 148. 
Cotton, Charles, 226. 
Council of Trent, 178. 



Court of Chancery, 125. 

Coventry, Sir John, 191. 

Cowley, 226. 

Crewe, Bishop of Durham, 202. 

Critic (Sheridan), 154. 

Cromwell, Oliver, 24, 25, 28, 29, 
30, 59, 60, 63, 64, 68, 73, 75, 77, 
89, 92, 93, 94, 95, 127, 137, 140, 
145, 215, 219. 

Lord Richard, 77, 79, 80, 81. 

the Lady Mary, 71. 

D 

Danby, Lord-Treasurer, 209, 228. 

Daphne and Chloe, 229. 

Dartmouth, Lord (Colonel Legge), 
141 n. 

Davies, T., 229. 

"Debate on Mr. Andrew Mar- 
vell's striking Sir Philip Har- 
court, March 29," etc., 212. 

Declaration of Indulgence, 187, 
188. 

Declaration of War, The, 187. 

Defence and Continuation of Ec- 
clesiastical Politic, A (Parker), 
153. 

Defensio Secunda pro populo An- 
glicana (Milton) , 48. 

Denham, Sir John, 27, 129, 226. 

De Ruyter, 115, 128, 136. 

^'Description of Holland, A" 
(Butler), 62. 

De Witt, John, 63, 187, 197. 

Dialogue between two horses, 
Charles I. at Charing Cross, 
and Charles II. at Wool 
Church, 218, 219. 

Dictionary of National Biogra- 
phy, 9, 210 n. 

Directions to a Painter (Den- 
ham), 129. 

Directory of Public Worship, 90, 
103. 

Discourse by Way of Vision con- 
cerniyig the Government of 
Oliver Cromwell (quoted), 73, 
92. 



INDEX 



235 



Discourse concerning Govern- 
rnent (Sidney), (i4. 

" Discourse of Ecclesiastical Pol- 
itic loherein the Authority of 
the Civil Magistrate over the 
Consciences of Subjects in 
matters of external Religion 
is asserted," etc., 153. 

Doune, Dr., 226, 227. 

Don Quixote (Shelton's transla- 
tion), 78. 

Dorset, 226. 

Dort, 187. 

Dover, 90. 

Drama Commonplaces, 154. 

Drop ofDeiv, A, 230. 

Dryden, John, 20, 24, 27, 69, 130. 

Dublin Castle, 196. 

Dunciad, 21. 

Dunkirk, 127, 137, 193, 215. 

Dutch War, 126. 

Dutton, Mr. (Cromwell's ward), 
54. 

E 

East India Company, 127. 
Ecclesiastical Polltie (quoted), 

157-8, 159-60. 
Edgar, Prince, 196. 
Elizabeth (Queen), 143. 
"Employment of my Solitude, 

The" (Fairfax), 32. 
" England 's Way to Win Wealth, " 

56 ; quoted, 56, 57, 58. 
Erith, 139. 
Essays of Elia, 230. 
Eton College, 51. 
Evelyn, John, 19, 121, 138, 139 n. 
Eyes and Tears, 225, 230. 

F 

Fagg, Sir John, 205. 

Fairfax, Lady Mary, 27, 28, 32, 03. 

Lord, 27,28,29,30,31, 48,50,63. 

Sir William, 33, 36. 

Fanshaw, Sir Richard, 49 n. 
Fauconberg, Lady, 95. 

Viscount (afterwards Earl) , 

71. 



Finch, Sir Heneage, 91, 224. 

Fii'st Anniversary of the Gov- 
ernment wider Bis Highness 
the Lord-Protector, The, 60. 

Five Mile Act, 117, 162, 203. 

Flagellum Parliamentwn, 97. 

Flanders, 196. 

Flecknoe, Richard, 20, 21, 

France, 183, 184, 197, 204. 

"Free Impartial Censure of the 
Platonick Philosophy, A" 
(Parker), 152 n., 174. 

French Alliance, 188. 

G 

Gallery, The, 230. 

" Garden Poetry," 75. 

Garden, The, 66, 225. 

Gee, Dr., 220. 

Gilbey, Colonel, 95, 98, 101. 

Gillingham, 127. 

Gladstone, 23, 104 n. 

Golden Remains (Hales), 51. 

Golden Treasury (1863), (Pal- 
grave), 230. 

Gombroon, 194. 

Government of the People of 
England, etc. (Parker), 172. 

Green, Mr., 222. 

Grosart, Mr., 7, 65, 84, 85, 106, 
165-9 n., 176 n., 178 n., 181 n., 
187 n., 204-6 ;«., 209 ?z., 223. 

Grosvenor, Colonel, 219. 

Growth of Popery (quoted), 203, 
206. 

H 

Hague, The, 197. 
Hale, Sir Matthew, 92, 125. 
Hales, John, 51. 
Hallam, 231. 
Hamilton, 172. 
Harding, Dean, 118. 
Harrington, James, 76, 222. 
Harrison, 29, 30. 
Harwich, 115. 
Hastings, Lord Henry, 27. 
Hazlitt, 61, 239. 
Herrick, 27. 



236 



INDEX 



His Majesty's most Gracious 
Speech to Both Houses of Par- 
liaynent, 200. 

Historical Dictionary (Jeremy 
Collier), 24 n. 

History of Eiigland (Ranke), 59, 
183, 185 n. 

History of His Own Time (Bur- 
net), 129, 136, 152 n., 189 n. 

History of His Own Time (Par- 
ker), 96 n., 170 n. 

History of Literature (Hallam), 
231 n. 

History of the Rebellion and Civil 
Wars in England, The, 136. 

Hobbes, 11, 12, 156, 157. 

Holland, 120, 135, 182-4, 186, 
197. 

Lord, 172. 

Hollis, Thomas, 64, 219. 

Holy Dying, 151. 

Horatian Ode upon CromioelVs 
Return from Ireland, 63, G&, 
225, 229, 230. 

Horfus (quoted), 45-6. 

Household Book of English 
Poetry (1869) (Dean Trench), 
230. 

Houses of Convocation, 101. 

Howard, Sir Robert, 195. 

Hudibras (Butler), 231. 

Hull, 2, 5, 8, 17, 18, 50, 59, 84, 95, 
98, 99, 101, 209, 223, 224; Town 
Hall, 224. 

Hull, History of (Gent), 17. 

Humber, The, 99. 

Hyde, Mrs., 202. 

Sir Edward (Earl of Claren- 
don), 49 n. 



Imposition upon wines, 196. 
Indies, East and West, 93. 
Inigo Jones, 221-2. 
Insolence and Impudence Ti-ium- 

phant, 153. 
Ireland, 122, 196, 209. 
Irish Cattle Bill, 122. 



Jessopp, Mr., 120. 
Johnson, Dr., 225, 227. 
" Johnson's Poets," 229. 



K 



Kremlin, 108. 



Lamb, William, 20, 61. 
Lambert, General, 29, 31, 82. 
Lambeth, 175. 
Last Instructions to a Painter 

about the Dutch Wars, The, 

129; quoted, 130 565., 135. 
Laud, Archbishop, 91, 167, 221. 
Lauderdale, Lord, 150, 185, 201, 

202. 
Lawson, Admiral, 115. 
Lenthall, Speaker, 81, 83. 
"Letter from a Parliament Man 

to his Friend" (Shaftesbury), 

97. 
Leviathan (Hobbes), 156. 
Life of the Great Lord Fairfax 

(Markham) (quoted), 31. 
Lines on Paradise Lost, 230. 
Locke, John, 6, 179. 
London, 90; Great Fire of, 17, 

119, 209; Great Plague of, 115, 

116, 119. 
Lort, Dr. (Master of Trinity), 

10. 
Louis XIV., 183, 185, 186, 188, 189, 

193, 196, 215. 
Lovelace, Richard, 25, 26, 227. 
Lucasta, 25, 26. 

M 

Macaulay, 70, 92. 

" MacFlecknoe " (quoted), 21. 

Manton, Dr., 162. 

Marise Marvell relictx et Johni 

Greni Creditori, 222. 
Marlborough, Earl of, 115. 
Martin Marprelate, 24. 
Marvell, Andrew, born 1621, 4; 

ancestry, 4-5; Hull Grammar 



INDEX 



237 



School, 8; school days, 8-0; goes 
to Trinity College, Cambridge, 
10; life at Cambridge, 11-12; 
becomes a Roman Catholic, 12 ; 
recantation and return to Trin- 
ity, 14 ; life at Cambridge ends, 
17; death of mother, 17; abroad 
in France, Spain, Holland, and 
Italy, 19; acquainted with 
French, Dutch, and Spanish 
languages, 19; jDoet, parlia- 
mentarian, and controversial- 
ist, 20; in Rome (1645), 20; 
invites Flecknoe to dinner, 22 ; 
neither a Republican nor a 
Puritan, 23; a Protestant and 
a member of the Reformed 
Church of England, 23 ; stood 
for both King and Parliament, 
23 ; considei'ed by Collier a dis- 
senter, 24 n. ; civil servant dur- 
ing Commonwealth, 24; rejoices 
at Restoration, 25; keeps 
Royalist company (1046-50), 
25 ; contributes commendatory 
lines to Richard Lovelace in 
poems published 1649, 25; de- 
fends Lovelace, 26 ; loved to be 
alone with his friends, lived for 
the most part in a hired lodg- 
ing, 26; one of thirty-three 
poets who wept for the early 
death of Lord H. Hastings, 27; 
went to live with Lord Fairfax 
at Nunappleton House as tutor 
to only child and daughter of 
the house (1650), 27; anony- 
mity of verses, 34; small vol- 
ume containing "The Garden 
Poetry" (1681), 34; tells story 
of Nunappleton House, 36-45 ; 
applies to Secretary for Foreign 
Tongues for a testimonial, 48; 
recommended by Milton to 
Bradshaw for post of Latin 
Secretary, 50; appointed four 
years later, 51 ; frequently visits 
Eton, 51; Milton intrusts him 



with a letter and copy of Se- 
cunda de/ensio to Bradshaw, 
52 ; appointed by the Lord- 
Pi'otector tutor to Mr. Button, 
64; resides with Oxenbridges, 
54; letters, 53, 54-5, 85-7, 92-3, 
94-6, 99, 100-1, 104, 105, 109-12, 
121, 122, 140, 141-3, 145-7, 148- 
50, 189-91, 191 seq., 210; begins 
his career as anonymous politi- 
cal poet and satirist (1653), 56; 
dislike of the Dutch, 56; im- 
pregnated with the new ideas 
about sea power, 59; reported 
to have been among crowd 
which witnessed Charles i.'s 
death, 64 ; first collected edition 
of works, verse and prose, pro- 
duced by subscription in three 
volumes, 64; became Milton's 
assistant (1657), 68; friendship 
with Milton, 69; takes Milton's 
place in receptions at foreign 
embassies, 69; plays part of 
Laureate during Protector's 
life, 71 ; produces two songs on 
marriage of Lady Mary Crom- 
well, 72-3; attends Cromwell's 
funeral, 73; is keenly inter- 
ested in public affairs, 75 ; be- 
comes a civil servant for a 
year, 75; M.P. for Hull, 75; 
friend of Milton and Harring- 
ton, 76; well disposed towards 
Charles ii., 77; remains in 
office till end of year (1659), 
77 ; elected with Ramsden M.P. 
for Kingston-upon-Hull, 78 ; at- 
tended opening of Parliament 
(1659), 80; is not a "Rumper," 
84 ; again elected for Hull (1660), 
84 ; begins his remarkable cor- 
respondence with the Corpora- 
tion of Hull, 84; a satirist, 
not an enthusiast, 85 ; lines on 
Restoration, 90; complains to 
House of exaction of £150 for 
release of Milton , 91 ; elected 



238 



INDEX 



for third, and last, time mem- 
ber for Hull, 95; receives fee 
from Corporation of Hull for 
attendance at House, 96; re- 
viled by Parker for taking this 
payment, 96; Flagellum Par- 
liamentum attributed to, 97; 
goes to Holland, 100; is re- 
called, 101 ; while in Holland 
writes to Trinity House and to 
the Corporation of Hull on 
business matters, 101 ; goes as 
secretary to Lord Carlisle on 
an embassy to Sweden and 
Denmark, 106; public entry 
into Moscow, 108; assists at 
formal reception of Lord Car- 
lisle as English ambassador, 
109; renders oration to Czar 
into Latin, 109; Russians ob- 
ject to terms of oration, 109; 
replies, 109-12; retnrns from 
embassy, 113; reaches London, 
113; attends Parliament at 
Oxford, 116; The Last Instruc- 
tions to a Painter about the 
Butch Wars, 129-35; bitter 
enemy of Hyde, 136 ; lines upon 
Clarendon House, 138 ; inquires 
into " miscarriages of the late 
war," 139; The Rehearsal 
Transprosed, 151 ; its great 
success, 152; literary method 
described by Parker, 162; 
called " adroll," " abuf¥oon," 
163; replies to Parker, 163 seq. ; 
intercedes, 168; abused by 
Parker in History of His Own 
Time, 170 n. ; The Rehearsall 
Transpros'd (second part), 
171-2; pictures Parker, 172 
seq. ; latterly fears subver- 
sion of Protestant faith, 179; 
his famous pamphlet. An Ac- 
count of the Growth of Popery 
and Arbitrary Government in 
England, 180-1, 203-5, 206-8; 
gives account of quarrel with 



Dutch, 186-7; commendatory 
verses on " Mr. Milton's Para- 
dise Lost" (1674:), 199 n. ; mock 
speech, His Majesty's Most 
Gracious Speech to Both 
Houses of Parliament, 200-2; 
story of proffered bribe, 209-10 ; 
last letter to constituents, 210; 
rarely speaks in the House of 
Commons, 211; longest re- 
Ijorted speech, 211 ; speech re- 
ported in Parliamentary His- 
tory (1677), 211; "Debate on 
Mr. Andreic MarvelVs striking 
Sir Philip Harco7irt," etc., 212- 
14; friend of Prince Rupert, 
214; lines on setting up of 
king's statne, 214-15; "Brit- 
annia and Raleigh," 216-19; 
dies, 219 ; thought to have been 
poisoned, 219; this suspicion 
dissipated, 220 ; account of sick- 
ness and death, 220-1 ; burial, 
221 ; obsequies, 223 ; epitaph, 
221; humour and Mat, 163; not 
a fanatic, 179; insatiable curi- 
osity, 182 ; power of self-repres- 
sion, 211; as poet, 225-30; as 
satirist, 228, 230-1 ; as prose 
writer, 231-2 ; love of gar- 
dens, 227; appearance de- 
scribed, 232; Hull's most 
famous member, 223; enemies, 
224; portraits of, 224; statue 
of, 224 ; editions of works, 229. 

Marvell, Rev. Andrew (father), 7. 

Mary (wife), 3, 222-3. 

" Marvell's Cottage," 223 ?i. 

MarvelVs Ghost (in Poems on 
Affairs of State), 220 n. 

May, 119. 

Mead, William, 191. 

Meadows, Philip, 51, 54. 

Medway, 139, 187. 

Memorials (Whitelock), 29. 

Milton, John, 2, 19, 20, 21, 48, 49, 
52, 64, 68, 69, 73, 76, 77, 91, 129, 
151, 199, 223, 226, 228. 



INDEX 



239 



Monk, General, Duke f>f Albe- 
marle, 80, 83, 91, 128, 139, 140. 

Dr., Provost of Eton, 94. 

Monmouth, Duke of, 110, 191. 

Monument ("tall bully "), 118. 

More (Moore), Thomas, 7. 

More, Kobert, 6. 

Morpeth, Lord, 113. 

Moscow, 105, 107. 

"Mr. Milton's Paradise Lost" 
(Marvell), 199 ?i. 

Musa Cantab rig iensis, 16. 

Muskerry, Lord, 115. 

N 
Napoleon, 24. 
Narrative of the Restoration 

(Collins), 81. 
National Portrait Gallery, 224. 
Navigation Act, 59, 63. 
Nettletou, Robert, 64; (Marvell's 

grand-nephew), 221. 
New Amsterdam, 136. 
New Guinea, 127. 
Novgorod, 113. 
Nunappleton House, 63. 
Nymph and Faivn, The, 230. 
Nymph complaining for the 

Death of her Fawn, The, 225. 

O 

Oaths Bill, 202, 205. 

Oceana (James Harrington), 222. 

Ode upon CromioeU's Return 

from Ireland, The, 34. 
Omniana (Southey), 20 n. 
Opdam, Admiral, 115, 129. 
Orleans, Duchess of, 185. 
Ormond, Duke of, 196. 
Orrery, 150. 
Owen, Dr. John, 81. 
Oxenbridge, John, 51. 
Oxford, 116. 



Paradise Lost, 10, 52, 69, 91. 
Paradise Regained, 91. 
Parker, Dr. Samuel, 9, 151-3, 



155, 157, 159-60, 162-3, 167, 

171-2, 211. 
Parliamentary History, 211. 
Paston, Sir Robert, 114. 
Pattison, Mark, Essays, 230. 
Peak, Sir William, 215. 
Pease, Anne, 6. 
Pelican (Inn) , 21. 
Pell, J., D.D., 222. 
Pembroke, Earl of, 202. 
Penderel, Richard, 222. 
Penn, William, 191. 
Pensionary or Long Parliament, 

95, 96, 135. 
Pepys, Samuel, 69, 90, 95, 96, 

113, 117, 118, 120, 121; Diary, 

129. 
Pett, Mr. Commissioner, 133. 
"Petty Navy Royal" (Dee), 56; 

(quoted), 57, .58. 
Pickering, Sir Gilbert, 69. 
Pilgrim's Progress, The, 158. 
Plymouth, 136. 
" Poem tipion the Death of his late 

Highness the Protector, A," 

74. 
Poems (1681) , 223. . 
Poems and Satires of Andrew 

Marvell, 47 n. 
Poems on Affairs of State, 228. 
Poleroone, 127, 136. 
" Politic Plat (plan) for the Hon- 
our of the Prince, A," 66. 
Poll Bill, 122. 
Ponder, Nathaniel, 171. 
Pope, 34, 130, 229. 
Popish Plot, 219. 
Popple, Edmund, 6. 

William, 6. 

Portland Papers, 116 n. 

Portsmouth, 136. 

Pride, Colonel, 94. 

Prince of Orange, 63. 

Pryune, 96. 

UvperoXoyla (Richard Morton), 

220. 

Q 
Quarles, 226. 



240 



INDEX 



R 

Ramsden, John, 78, 84, 95. 

William, 189, 210. 

Rehearsal (Duke of Bucking- 
ham), 154; quoted, 154-5. 

Rehearsal Transprosed, The 
(quoted), 23-4, 51 n., 151, 152 
n., 162; (second part), 171; 
quoted, 172-8, 211. 

Religio Laid, 24 n. 

Reproof to the Rehearsal Trans- 
prosed (quoted), 11)2, 168, 169 
seq. 

Reynolds, Dr., Bishop of Nor- 
wich, 93. 

Riga, 113. 

Robinson, Matthew, 11. 

Rochester, Earl of, 226. 

Rome, 193. 

Roos Divorce Bill, 148, 149. 

"Rota" Club, 3, 76. 

Rouen, 139, 139 ?i. 

Royal Charles, The, 115, 136. 

Rump Parliament, 81, 82, 83. 

Rupert, Prince, 3, 214. 

Rush worth, 28. 



St. Giles's Church in the Fields, 
221. 

St. John, Oliver, 51. 

Saints' Rest (Baxter), 151. 

Samson Agonistes, 91. 

Santa Cruz, 69. 

Savoy Conference, 90, 101, 103, 
104. 

Scotland, 204. 

Scroggs, Lord Chief Justice, 100. 

Secunda defensio, 52. 

Select Poets (Hazlitt), 230. 

Shadwell, 20, 21. 

Shaftesbury, Earl of, 205. 

Sharp, Archbishop, 224. 

Sheerness, 127, 128, 136. 

Sheldon, Dr., Archbishop of Can- 
terbury, 153. 

Shirley (dramatist), 118, 222. 

Shrewsbury, Lady, 196. 



Sidney Sussex College, 219. 

Skinner, Mrs., 18. 

Skynner, Mr., 54. 

Sluys, 186. 

Smith, Mr. Goldwin, 123 n. 

Sobieski, John, 214. 

Social England Illustrated, 56 n. 

Solemn League and Covenant, 29. 

Song of Agincourt (Drayton), 70. 

Southampton, Lord, 95, 203. 

Southey, 226. 

Spain, 183, 184. 

Specimens (Campbell), 230. 

Specimens of Early English Poets 

(Mr. George Ellis), 229. 
State Trials, 191. 
Sterne, Bishop of Carlisle, 94. 
Stockholm, 113. 
Surat, 113, 194. 
Surinam, 187. 
Sutton, Mrs., 202. 
Swift, Benjamin, 152, 231. 



Table Talk (Selden), 179. 
Tait, Archbishop, 23. 
Temple, Sir William, 183. 
Tender Conscience, 161; quoted, 

161-2. 
Tentamina Physico Theologica 

(Parker), 174. 
Test Bill, 188. 
Texel, 127. 
Thompson, Captain Edward, 10, 

64, 68, 73, 84, 202 ?i., 221, 223, 

224, 229. 
Thurloe, John, 50, 52. 
To his Coy ilistress, 66, 225, 230. 
Torbay, 136. 
Tower, The, 206. 
Travels and Voyages (Harris), 

106. 
Treatise on Education (Milton), 

9. 
"Treatise on the breeding of the 

Horse," 32. 
Treaty of Dover, 184, 150 n., 

186. 



INDEX 



241 



Treby, George, M.P., 219. 
Trench, Dean, 67 n. 
Trevor, 150. 
Trinity Church, Hull, 223. 

College, Cambridge, 10. 

House, 100. 

Triple Alliance, The, 183, 184, 

186. 
Trot, Sir John, 197. 
True Greatness of Kingdoms and 

Estates, The (Bacon), 60. 
Truth and Innocence Vindicated 

(Owen), 153. 
Turner, Sir Edward, 135. 

U 

Unreformed House of Commons, 

The (Porritt), 96 7i. 
Upnor Castle, 128. 
"Upon His House," 138. 
Upon Appleton House, 2.30. 
Upon the Hill and Grove of Bill- 

borow, 230. 
Urquhart, Sir Thomas, 89. 



Vane, Sir Harry, 89. 
Van Tromp, 59, 61, 63, 115. 
Vere, Lord, 32. 

Villiers, George, Duke of Buck- 
ingham, 33. 
Viner, Sir Robert, 214, 215. 
Virginia, 58, 



W 

Walcheren, 186. 

Walker, 226. 

Waller, 73, 144, 145 n., 226. 

"Walton's Life" (Wotton), 19; 

quoted, 20. 
Ward, Seth, 153 n. 
Watts, Dr., 65. 
Weckerlin, Georg Rudolph, 49; 

Latin Secretary to Parliament, 

49«.,50. 
Welch, Mr., 210. 
Westminster Hall, 140. 

Parliament of, 83. 

White, Bishop of Ely, 13. 
Whitehall, 117. 
Whitelock's Memorials, 29. 
William and Margaret (Mallet), 

65. 
Wine Licenses, 196. 
Winestead, 4. 
Wise, Lieutenant, 140. 
Wither, 226. 
Wood, Anthony, 25. 
Wordsworth, 229. 
Worshipful Society of Masters 

and Pilots of Trinity House, 

84. 

Y 

Yarmouth, 58. 

York, Ducliess of, 193, 196. 

Duke of, 115, 188, 189. 

Young Love, 225, 229, 230. 



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